Re: [gentoo-mips] Reducing the number of the MIPS supported stages

[Markos Chandras <hwoarang@gentoo.org>]

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On 05/05/2014 06:13 PM, Justin Cormack wrote:
> On May 5, 2014 3:07 PM, "Markos Chandras" <hwoarang@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Right now the number of stages for each endianness is 8:
>> 
>> - mips1 - mips32 - mips32r2 - mips3 - mips4 - mips4_r10 - mips64 
>> - mips64r2
>> 
>> ==> 16 stages in total.
>> 
>> This takes quite a bit of time for all stages to be built (by the
>> time
> everything is built, we are one month passed the time the snapshot
> was taken). How about stop building stages for mips1, mips3 and
> mips4? We keep the existing stages on the mirrors but we will no
> longer update them (or maybe we do on per user or per case basis).
> I understand there is hardware for these ISAs but how often do
> people actually use the new stages?
>> 
>> Just to be clear, I am not suggesting for the team to stop
>> supporting
> these ISAs but to stop building new stages and let the users of
> such ISAs, grab an old stage3 and do the update themselves if
> needed.
>> 
>> This will free up some hardware resources for building different
>> stages
> for the newer ISAs (maybe more non-multilib n32 and n64 variants
> etc)
>> 
>> What does everyone think?
>> 
> 
> Agree in general but not quite sure about the choice. Mips3
> (fuloong) is still quite widely used I think. Mips32 might not be
> though, Android seems to be mips32r2
> 
> Has anyone asked Imagination for resources to support this?

I work for Imagination :) and resources is not huge problem. Like I
said, I am happy to do it provided there is good reason (and userbase)
to do it. Regarding mips3/fuloong users can still get an existing
stage3 and update afterwards. Like I said before, I never proposed to
drop these stages from mirrors, just to stop updating them.

Ideas are welcomed, my initial email was just a suggestion and my goal
was to kick off a discussion

- -- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras
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