> On Jun 14, 2024, at 11:46, Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote: > > 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.
My response remains the same. If it only affects a small slice of systems that already represent a small slice of systems, it becomes untenably difficult to chase that one bug that affects that one case. But that does not translate into an excuse to drop all of the many working legacy systems. This argument gets used both ways by people who just want to abandon "old stuff," regardless of the circumstances. As someone who uses things until they fail, I find myself unmoved by these excuses. There is always a corner case that doesn't work. But my 32-bit machines have been able to run Linux for as long as Linux has existed. Even under the bookworm "Intel 686-only" rules, it still works, so I still use it. It's built, it runs, it serves a purpose, and it costs very little. Dropping support for something that works based on some other much less common thing that doesn't work sounds to me like an excuse, not a logically valid reason. --J
