Re: Willing to test IA64 builds of Debian and kernel with other distributions if needed

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Hello Adrian,

On 27.09.23 21:57, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On Wed, 2023-09-27 at 21:15 +0200, Frank Scheiner wrote:
>> Again for Linux, Linus had a different opinion back in February and als=
o
>> backed that with information provided by `git log [...]`:
>>
>> ```
>> [...]
>>
>> IOW, I'm more worried about "ia64 makes it a pain to make _generic_
>> changes".
>>
>> IOW, doing something like this:
>>
>>       git log -p --no-merges --since=3D1.year arch/ia64/
>>
>> to see what kind of pain ia64 parts of patches have caused, about a
>> third of them are that "look, somebody cared about ia64 explicitly".
>>
>> And then the rest are trivial fixups for generic changes that aren't
>> any different from any other architecture. The only half-way
>> complicated one is the SET_FS removal, and I don't think it was any
>> worse than most other architectures.
>>
>> IOW, it doesn't look like ia64 causes any huge issues _per_se_. I
>> suspect alpha continues to be more of a pain.
>>
>> That said, it's entirely possible I've missed some particular painpoint=
.
>>
>> But when it's actively known to be broken and nobody has time or
>> interest to look at it, at that point the "it doesn't look any more
>> painful than other architectures" becomes kind of moot.
>> ```
>
> You're talking about the kernel here only though and not the toolchain
> or glibc.

IIUC the kernel is the key, w/o support for ia64 in the kernel the
remainder is not needed and will drop support, too. Tackling everything
at once seems futile, tackling one at a time could make the difference.
And to make it work we have take care of the kernel first.

> In glibc, for example, many of the tests are failing [1] with
> one of the glibc upstream maintainers telling me there is zero chance
> these issues are going to be fixed.

I went through a lot of logs starting in 2018 (always taking the highest
release version of the different minor versions with tests enabled) and
the pass rate is actually better now - although by a small number - not
worse than in 2018 (see attached file). It's touching 96 % PASS rate for
2.38-3.

And it could be a good idea to check the details of the tests failing,
as for example hppa has 78 enabled tests less than ia64 for this
version. Maybe a specific portion of the 185 tests failing of 4424 + 185
tests enabled (leaving aside XFAIL and XPASS) for ia64 are (just)
unsupported.

> Do we just want to ignore these forever and just build glibc manually al=
l
> the time with the testsuite disabled?

See further above, one at a time.

>> If I interpret it correctly there seem to be two distinct groups of
>> upstream developers in this regard: the ones that have to work on ia64
>> as part of their work area and want it gone loudly and the ones that
>> just work on ia64 as part of their work area and keep going.
>>
>> The people here (You for sure, Pedro, Dimitri, me and maybe Mike, too
>> and maybe others, too) and there (Tomas) would surely like to work with
>> both of them to keep ia64 going. Together we have the machines **and**
>> the expertise.
>
> I'm not doing any relevant ia64 upstream maintenance and I don't think t=
his
> is true for the others that you are counting to the second group. I thin=
k
> it would be dishonest to claim that anyone in this group is doing actual
> maintenance at the moment.

Strong words, looks like we've come to the bottom of it.

But is it not maintenance when the second group's changes touch ia64 and
so they adapt ia64 at the same time?

Was [2] not maintenance? And was [3] not also maintenance? And is [4]
not maintenance?

[2]:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/db3e33dd8bd956f165436afdbdbf1c653=
fb3c8e6

[3]:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/9471f1f2f50282b9e8f59198ec6bb738b=
4ccc009

[4]:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ia64/[email protected].=
com/T/#t

Can't all these be attributed to the second group?

Maybe a detailed look at `git log` for the last two years can shed some
light on the actual details.

Or maybe you didn't understand what I meant with "Together we have the
machines **and** the expertise."? Do you presume that the first group
doesn't want to work with us even with a maintainer in place? The very
first argument of Ard in [5] and [6] was that there's no maintainer for
ia64.

[5]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/

[6]:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ia64/[email protected]=
g/

Cheers,
Frank

>> [1] https://buildd.debian.org/status/fetch.php?pkg=3Dglibc&arch=3Dia64&=
ver=3D2.38-3&stamp=3D1694223476&raw=3D0

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