Re: What's the plan for powerpc64 in FreeBSD 16

Adrian Chadd <adrian_at_freebsd.org> wrote on
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2025 22:58:38 UTC :

> . . .
> 
> But like, I also don't buy the "kill it" argument for some stuff when
> we actually have users and interest,
> and maybe if we didn't treat things as a "crappy platform" or "I hate
> working on this" - see how
> the FreeBSD developer community has treated the Raspberry Pi platforms
> as an example - we wouldn't
> keep hitting these issues.
> 
> . . . 

I've been trying to parse this and it seem to be a
specification that folks should volunteer
differently than they have after the last highly
active developers/maintainers backed off for the
RPi*'s, just because there would be users
interested in the results. (Note: I'm aware of
efforts for the RPi5 beyond the partial EDK2 draft
that I use as a context for FreeBSD, but that is
over-specific to the overall structure of the point
above.)

But any lack of unpaid folks with the relevant skills
and background knowledge, time and interest --that
look forward to volunteering-- looks to be a
sufficient reason to drop support for any platform
for FreeBSD. A ready supply of users may be necessary
for support to be reasonable --but is far from
sufficient for support to be reasonable. Such is the
nature of volunteer development/maintenance efforts.

The last time I contributed to the RPi* kernel code
it was to eliminate the early boot crashes with more
modern RPi* .dtb files at the time. It took me
something like 8 months to identify the 2 or so
relevant source code lines and specify an
approximately appropriate textual change that someone
committed with a relevant better-alternative value
used. I fail the "relevant skills and background
knowledge" aspect on any reasonable timescale, even
if the other aspects had no issues. (But there are
such issues as well.)

I will happily continue to use some RPi*'s via
FreeBSD while I can. But I'm not going to object
to other's choices about their activities --or to
FreeBSD avoiding accumulated technical debt that
can result.

The same would be true if I still had access to
working big endian powerpc64 or big endian 32 bit
powerpc (old PowerMacs at the time). (I've never
had access to any little endian powerpc*.)


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com