Hi Efraim, Efraim Flashner <efr...@flashner.co.il> skribis:
> On Sat, Apr 17, 2021 at 06:04:02PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: [...] >> 3. OTOH, what will be the status of this architecture? I don’t think >> new 32-bit PPC hardware is being made (right?), so I guess we >> probably won’t have substitutes for that architecture. That means >> it won’t be supported at the same level as other architectures and >> may quickly suffer from bitrot. > > I don't know about new 32-bit powerpc hardware, I think it's only being > newly created for the embedded and networking space. As far as operating > systems with support¹ Adélie Linux is the only one I know that's > actually targeting the machines. > > I found that emulation on my desktop (Ryzen 3900XT, 24 threads) is > faster than building on native hardware (1 core, 1.5GB of RAM, original > 4200 RPM disk), edging it out on single threaded compiling and doing > great when it comes to using multiple cores and parallel builds. > Ignoring how to create an OS image if we just targeted, say, mesa and > maybe one or two other packages, we could have a core set which doesn't > change regularly and won't take up too much emulated build time but will > save days of compile time. [...] > The fear of bit-rot is real and I think we should mention in the manual > (when I actually write the section) that support is best-effort with > minimal substitutes. I feel like “best-effort with minimal substitutes” is already more than I’d be willing to commit to as a maintainer. We just added POWER9, for which we have actual hardware, and even getting to this minimal state where we provide a binary tarball required quite some effort. Doing the same with 32-bit PowerPC would require us to set up emulation; we wouldn’t even have real hardware. All in all, my preference would be to take the patches but not mention PowerPC 32-bit support anywhere, or at least, not provide substitutes and binary installation tarball. IOW, few people would know whether it actually works :-) but tinkerers could still play with it. WDYT? Ludo’.
