Re: Removing dpkg arch definition for arm64ilp32?

Wookey <[email protected]> Sat, 11 Nov 2023 20:36:16 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.ports.arm,gmane.linux.debian.devel.dpkg.general
Organization	Wookware
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 2023-11-11 18:57 +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On Fri, 2023-10-27 at 20:17:21 -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 02:29:30PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> > > Are either of those ports (armeb/arm64ilp32) actually useful / alive
> > > at this point?
> > 
> > Not that I have seen.  I didn't think anything other than the IXP ever
> > really used big endian and that's a long time ago.  arm64ilp32 seems
> > to serve less purpose than x32 did (and x32 doesn't seem to be doing
> > much either).  Certainly looks essentially dead at this point.
> 
> While scanning the libc-alpha list recently I read [M] that arm64ilp32
> was never upstreamed in Linux nor glibc? If so, I think there's little
> point in carrying the arch definitions in dpkg, and I guess that would
> not make the cut if requested now (for reference this was requested in
> bug #824742). Does anyone know whether it was ever used or it is being
> used even if privately/internally somewhere?

It was being used internally/developmentally for a while (at CISCO)
but, as you observe, only with large kernel and toolchain
patches. Various groups dragged their feet on this to disourage it
becoming a thing we'd all have to maintain for years. I was doing the
debian development at ARM at the time and the bootstrap was never
completed. A few people (largely just CISCO) wanted it quite
badly. Nearly everyone else thought it was not worth the maintenance
effort. No-one has asked about it for quite a few years now (last mail
Oct 2018) so I think we can assume that it is indeed dead and no-one
would notice for years/ever if you removed it from dpkg.

> For armeb, I assume it was properly upstreamed at the time, and it was
> actually used, even if it's currently not in use (like arm) I see tons
> of references in Sources files, and thus removing the arch definitions
> for either of these would not be safe right now I think.

It is obsolete. It probably doesn't work any more having been unused
since the early days of the NSLU2/Sarge (circa 2006/2007). It might
still have been in use till 2011ish?. As you say it should probably be
removed from upstream sources before it is removed from
dpkg. Interesting question on how much effort (if any) (and when)
should be applied to tidying up stuff like this which is simply no
longer in use. If/when 'arm' is removed 'armeb' should certainly go
with it.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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