On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Cameron Kaiser <ckai...@floodgap.com> wrote:
> Replying to a couple messages at once. > > On 12/14/15 2:19 PM, Mike Hoye wrote: > >> On 2015-12-14 4:06 PM, Justin Dolske wrote: >> >>> On 12/14/15 2:51 AM, Ted Mielczarek wrote: >>> >>> [...]Obviously this isn't something we like to see, but >>>> we shouldn't let the support of non-Tier 1 platforms guide our decision >>>> making to that extent. Enabling Rust components in Gecko is important >>>> work, and outweighs the value of supporting Firefox on minority >>>> platforms. >>>> >>> >>> +1. We shouldn't be doing any work to maintain Tier-3 platforms, nor >>> should they hold us back from modernizing and securing the platforms >>> used by the overwhelming majority of our users. >>> >> >> While I agree with this, giving those tier-3 platform maintainers as >> much advanced notice as possible and good-faith-if-low-touch guidance as >> to how they can keep rolling would be a fine thing. >> > > It would be nice, at least. Obviously I'm closer to this than other people > on this thread, and maybe this reflects the paucity of platforms today > compared with, say, 15 years ago, but the attitude towards tier-3 has > degenerated a little beyond benign neglect lately. I don't think Justin is > wrong for his position, but implicit in saying they aren't worth any effort > is also saying they aren't worth maintaining a good relationship with or > serve a useful purpose. The roughly 25,000 people who regularly use > TenFourFox, a stable number confirmed by update checkins and download > stats, would probably disagree. That's a rounding error in the Firefox user > stats but they're loyal all the same. > > Candidly, I'd like to see a little more recognition of the work it takes > to keep a minority port alive, even if that shouldn't necessarily translate > into material assistance, and I don't see much of this from many Firefox > developers lately. If for no other reason than portability and diversity, > we do matter to the ecosystem. I'm just asking for mutual understanding, > since the position of MoFo is glaringly clear to us and I think we'd all > agree it's not unreasonable even if it is unfortunate. > > </rant> > > I see a few names with no mailing addresses for a number of people on >> the supported build configurations page, so I'm going to see if I can >> find them and ask them to add their contact information. >> > > I posted a heads-up to the OS/2 port maintainer, since I have some > contacts there. > > On 12/14/15 2:22 PM, Nathan Froyd wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 12, 2015 at 5:17 PM, Cameron Kaiser <ckai...@floodgap.com> > > wrote: > > > >> This would essentially mandate, then, that Gecko can only be built on > >> platforms with a Rust toolchain. That may be desirable, but it would > >> probably bust some of the obscure Tier-3 platforms and it would > definitely > >> bust TenFourFox (we can't even get clang to be happy on 10.4 currently). > >> Not that we haven't been on borrowed time for awhile; I just point it > out > >> for the record. <https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform> > >> > > > > FWIW, we'd also like to make Gecko require a C++11-compliant standard > > library, and that will also have roughly the same effect as requiring > > Rust. I don't have exact dates on that happening, but I'd really like to > > see it happen in the first half of 2016. > > I don't think these are really in the same category. All of the extant > Tier-3 ports compile with gcc too, and keeping gcc up (assuming gcc itself > doesn't obsolete the platform) should bring along a C++11 libstdc++ along > with it. I'm using gcc 4.8 now on OS X/ppc, and Tigerbrew even already has > 5.2. > > Rust, on the other hand: > > On 12/14/15 5:55 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote: > > As for tier-3, a quick search indicates that rustc has already been > > bootstrapped on (x86ish?) FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Wikipedia says that > > LLVM supports MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC and Z/Architecture. It looks like > > Debian has dropped 68K. So it should be feasible for *BSD and > > non-mainstream CPU arch versions of Debian to come along. Maybe there > > is rustc porting work to be done, but I think people who want these > > platforms to be supported internalize the cost of supporting them > > instead of expecting Gecko to stop progressing because of them. > > Independent of the policy decision, "rustc porting work" is not trivial, > since none of these arches has an existing rustc (only x86 and ARM32), even > on Linux, and none of the Tier-3 Rusts have cargo support.[1] I imagine > this would require either a cross-compiling rust or building the stage0 > from scratch. > > [1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/installing-rust.html#tier-3 > > In any case, > > > Firefox 45 will be ESR. I think it's reasonable to make Rust a Gecko > > build requirement after 45 and let tier-3 platforms use the ESR cycle > > to get rustc/LLVM up and running where it's not up and running > > already. > > Let me be clear that I don't find this to be unreasonable and I would be > willing to work within this timeframe, though I think we're going to have > to fork anyway for other reasons. I'm still going to do some feasibility > exploration, though. > > That said, I kind of object to the fact that no one brought this up until > I noticed it in passing, and the work to get Rust up on a tier-3 platform > -- a language that currently has no relevance to those platforms other than > this purpose -- is certainly more than it is to keep the compiler > maintained, which I don't think is acknowledged. Everyone expects Servo to > demand Rust, but there wasn't really any warning about Gecko doing so. There have been serious discussions about adding Rust components to Gecko for well over a year. Basic Rust support has been in mozilla-central since May (https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b811c7d4f39b) - about the same time Rust 1.0 (stable) was released. By the time we ship a Rust component in Firefox, Rust stable and basic build system support will be over 1 year old. To say there hasn't been any warning about shipping Rust in Gecko just isn't true. What we haven't done is said definitively when we'll do so - but only because we don't know when everything will be ready. But we are committed to shipping Rust in 2016 and I don't think anyone - not even Steven Seagal - can stop that train. http://i.imgur.com/CbUkbIs.jpg _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
