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

[Immolo <immoloism@googlemail.com>]

Hi all,

As a 32bit user on many arches I'll try to answer Flow's question below.

On Wed, 26 Jun 2024 at 07:38, Florian Schmaus <flow@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Arthur,
>
> thanks for taking the time to write this mail.
>
> On 25/06/2024 19.33, 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 have the impression as well. The time to drop stable keywords for x86
> probably has come. But I always wonder if there is a x86 use-case we are
> not aware of. Therefore, if there is a group of x86 Gentoo users out
> there, then they should speak now and ideally elaborate a bit on their
> use case.

I personally support the move to ~arch for all 32bit arches that I use
(x86, ppc and arm) as I don't feel many people are testing these
platforms, so I've found generally a better experience since switching
as fixes seem to get sorted a lot faster.

My only concern is around running the testing toolchain on these
systems as we have had 2 x86 breakages with glibc causing a user to
need to reinstall in at least one occasion and there was also the
issue with ppc not working with GCC13 and 14 for a very long time.
Now for me I enjoy the challenge of issues like this so I wouldn't
have an issue however not everyone is like me so I would advocate that
we would have a system in place for a phased keywording around glibc,
gcc, llvm, clang and binutils. This way users can have a stable
toolchain with minimal issues and users such as myself can help you
all by giving you early warning.
This wouldn't have to be a permanent plan in place however, I believe
it would make the transition a lot smoother for both devs and users.

Bugs:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/933764
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31316

Kind regards,

Immolo