Re: [gentoo-dev] Arch Status and Future Plans

[James Le Cuirot <chewi@gentoo.org>]

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On Tue, 2024-06-25 at 20:33 +0300, Arthur Zamarin wrote:
> ======== x86 ========
> 
> Stable 32-bit arch. I'll be honest, I don't believe at all this should
> be stable arch anymore. I propose making it dev arch, and mass-dekeyword
> stuff we got because of inertia. This arch is close to HW die. (let's
> not talk about i486 vs i686).

I don't use stable, so I'm biased, but I think this is long overdue.

> ======== ppc ========
> 
> Stable 32-bit arch. Becoming harder and harder with time, with more
> broken stuff (which I just destable/dekeyword).
> 
> I propose we convert it into dev arch status, not stable. If folks
> disagree, once again mass-dekeyword.

I'm inclined to kill it. I actively used hardware once upon a time, but that
was nearly 20 years ago. When I dropped Java support for it around 2016ish, I
literally one found user. I've never heard of one since.

> ======== ppc64 ========
> 
> Stable 64-bit arch. So, this is a mess of an arch. Consists of both
> ppc64ul (big-endian) and ppc64le (little-endian). The latter is much
> better supported by upstream. The profiles inheritance inside is a mess
> (we even added running 32 userspace on 64 bit kernel, called ppc64/32ul
> - just why?). We have devboxes for both BE and LE, so mostly fine. The
> profile inheritance is the messiest I've even seen.
> 
> I would hope to split this arch into the two endianness, but I suspect
> nobody has the energy to do it. Oh well.
> 
> Next proposal is to cleanup profiles: remove the ppc64/32ul, cleanup
> profile inheritance, cleanup the masks and unmasks, and continue with
> both ppc64ul & ppc64le supported.

I wasn't really in favour of having LE and BE under the same keyword, but I
was overruled. My fears have largely proven true. We have seen a lot of issues
around graphical stuff. Sure, we've handled it in profiles, but it is a pain.


> ======== m68k ========
> 
> Exp arch, works ? maybe? I've no idea. Let's not touch :)

It's not too bad and generally works. I'm a little slow on keywording requests
sometimes, but I mostly keep up. I have thought about promoting it from exp to
dev now that the tree is in a better state than it was, but there is still
some work to do. We have an important ABI breakage ahead, but that is being
discussed.

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