Re: Porter roll call for Debian Stretch

John Paul Adrian Glaubitz:
> On 09/30/2016 06:08 PM, Niels Thykier wrote:
>> I strongly /suspect/ that "no porters" for powerpc will imply the
>> removal of powerpc for Stretch.  It may or may not be moved to ports
>> (assuming someone is willing to support it there).
> 
> So, I take this as a "no" for the offer from me and Christoph Biedel to take
> over the powerpc port for Stretch?
> 
> [...]
> 
> Thanks,
> Adrian
> 

My statement above was made based on the assumption stated in the first
line of Mathieu's mail, which was "Assume there are no powerpc porters
for Stretch".

As for "porter qualification"
=============================

We got burned during the Jessie release, where a person answered the
roll call for sparc and we kept sparc as a release architecture for
Jessie.  However, we ended up with a completely broken and unbootable
sparc kernel.

  That was an embarrassment to the Debian stability and quality
  reputation that I never - ever - want to repeat.

(For avoidance of doubt: I want to ensure that release architectures
"just work(tm)" and I have no desire to blame that volunteer).


If I am to support powerpc as a realease architecture for Stretch, I
need to know that there are *active* porters behind it committed to
keeping it in the working.  People who would definitely catch such
issues long before the release.  People who file bugs / submit patches etc.


If you need inspiration: Have a look at the [automatic testing of
ppc64el images].  Or the [arm64 machines on ci.debian.net] with
comparable results to amd64.  This is the sort of thing that inspires
confidence in the ports for me and I think we should have vastly more of.


Thanks,
~Niels

[automatic testing of ppc64el images]:
 https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2016/06/msg00002.html

[arm64 machines on ci.debian.net]:
 https://ci.debian.net/status/