Re: how many users of FreeBSD 12 do we have on powerpc?

On 2021-Feb-10, at 14:39, Mark Linimon <linimon at lonesome.com> wrote:

> So I want to get an idea if we can start trying to move FreeBSD/powerpc*
> users from 12.X to 13.0 once 13.0 is released.
> 
> The problem is that we have limitations on:
> 
> - hardware resources w/rt building ports on 3 branches

Only matters for powerpc64? No such building for
32-bit is normally done?

> - human resources trying to support 3 branches

This still applies for 32-bit powerpc variants,
outside of just ports.

Although, trying to cover 32-bit PowerMacs may
have a similar status for this human resources
point outside of ports. (May be only chroot
style or analogous on powerpc64's that allow
such for 32-bit code? As stands, I do modern
FreeBSD 32-bit PowerMac activity on powerpc64
via chroot and poudriere activity, other than
evidence gathering relative to known 32-bit
kernel problems for PowerMacs.)

> The powerpc ports team (the entire handful of us) is talking about
> dropping ports building for 12-STABLE in favor of starting to build
> 14-CURRENT.
> 
> How many people will this affect if we do so?
> 
> fwiw, I personally believe 13.0 will be a complete superset except for:
> 
> - ports that fail due to duplicate_symbol
> 
> and all of those are problems shared with even amd64.
> 
> (Also, I personally believe that it is fair to say "we do not really
> support powerpc* on 10.X or 11.Y.  Please upgrade.")
> 
> How many people will these changes effect?  It's time to speak up ...

It can be hard to tell about the contrasting case(s)
vs. just non-responders without explicit reports, so
. . .

I have converted the old PowerMac contexts that I have
access to to be based on FreeBSD:14:* ABIs, including
having built various ports for powerpc64 and for
32-bit powerpc (nearly the same ports for both these
days). Old PowerMacs are the only form of powerpc*
families that I have access to.



Side note:

With the 2-socket/2-core-each G5 failures I've
gone from a set of origins that resulted in about
476 port builds to a set that results in about 101
port builds. No more llvm* builds, for example. I
cross build FreeBSD itself for powerpc64 and 32-bit
powerpc. I build 32-bit powerpc ports on the one
well-operating G5 that I still have access to
(2 sockets/1-core-each). I have fairly strong time
preferences.

But going in the other direction: It is not clear
that I'd use:

http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD%3A14%3Apowerpc64

to get installations of any ports that I choose
not to build. Port building is a test of if
the system is still operating fairly well and
my historical toolchain explorations no longer
serve much purpose. And there is no:

http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD%3A14%3Apowerpc


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com
( dsl-only.net went
away in early 2018-Mar)

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