r...@neoquasar.org writes: > Then it's not a problem in the first place. If you can't reproduce a bug > with a reasonable effort, then it is unconfirmed and you can stop > worrying about it.
I think you're confusing two different types of reproduction. Architecture porting bugs are often hardware-specific. The bug may be 100% reproducible on that instance of the architecture, an instance that you do not own and do not have access to. So the package is reliably broken for a user trying to use that architecture, and yet the porter has limited ability to triage or debug it because they don't have access to that architecture. This is one of the reasons why projects (not just Debian) drop support for architectures. Once the *maintainers* no longer have easy access to instances of that architecture, it's very hard to support, even if users keep trying to use that architecture and run into problems that are reproducible for them. That's the first hurdle. The second hurdle you then run into is that frequently the cause of these problems is deep inside the compiler, the kernel, or some other complex piece of upstream code. There are a very limited number of people who have the ability to track down and fix problems like that, since they can require a lot of toolchain expertise. It's not a simple thing to commit to doing. Debian relies fairly heavily on a whole ecosystem of upstream developers to do a lot of the difficult work for supporting architectures, including the kernel, GCC, binutils, etc. If that ecosystem stops supporting architectures, it will be very difficult for Debian to keep support, and doing so usually requires the people interested in keeping those architectures working to also become upstream kernel, GCC, etc. developers. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
