[gentoo-dev] RFC: removal of keyword arm-linux

[Benda Xu <heroxbd@gentoo.org>]

Hi,

As the Perl Team raised the issue of "arm-linux" keywords in the
ebuilds[1], I think it is a good chance to completely remove them from
our tree.

What is "arm-linux" keyword?  Gentoo Prefix has 2 kinds of profiles.  An
libc profile builds glibc in a Prefix and uses implicit keywords, while
An rpath profile uses host glibc and uses explicit keywords
"${ARCH}-linux".  Therefore arm-linux represents rpath flavor of arm
Prefix.

In the profiles/, however, we use "arm-linux" to represent Prefix in
arch.list and profiles.desc.  And that bears no relation with keywords
in the ebuilds.


How did "arm-linux" appear?  Around 2013, both the ARM Arch Team and the
Prefix Team were interested in supporting Prefix on ARM.  In the Prefix
Team, a debate of implicit vs explicit keywording was on-going.  At the
same time, the ARM Arch Team went ahead to plant arm-linux into the
tree.

What is the status of "arm-linux" keywords?  They are unmaintained and
has not been touched for 5+ years.  At present, the Prefix Project is
phasing out Linux rpath profiles and using libc profiles as default.
There has been no commit in the gentoo.git history regarding "arm-linux"
keyword. The gentoo-x86 CVS history shows the commit author was mainly
Zac (zmedico).

What is recommended?  Just use the "arm" keyword, it has been proven to
work well as an implicit ARM Prefix keyword by the Android Project[2].


"arm-linux" is considered deprecated, unmaintained and easily replaced
by "arm".  I propose removing it from gentoo.git completely.

Yours,
Benda


1. https://bugs.gentoo.org/664598
2. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Android/Devices