[gentoo-dev] IA64 Arch status

[Jack Morgan]

All,

I wanted to send out an update on the IA64 arch team status. Currently, 
we are one of the few Linux distributions that is still supporting this 
arch as far as I know. Debian, for example, has stopped supporting it[1] 
last year. Getting access to hardware will continue to be challenge 
moving forward.

I'm hoping to get some feedback from the community as to what should be 
supported and what can be reduced. My overall plan as I mentioned in a 
previous email to reduce the total number of keywords for ia64 to a more 
manageable level. I'd like to continue to have ia64 be a stable arch for 
gentoo for as long as it makes sense.


(1) Bugzilla
At the time of writing, here is the bug count for ia64. Since I'm 
devaway the next few days, I'll start working on these in a week.

ia64: total (135), keywordreq (59), stablereq(57)


(2) Installation (Wiki/Releng)
The documentation is up to date and accurate. Thanks doc team! I 
recently did a fresh install so the current iso and stage3 work well. 
The stage3 need to be updated because they include perl-18 instead of 
perl-20. Otherwise, the install process is stable on my system.


(3) Infra
There is one developer machine[2] to use for keyword testing. Please 
request access from the contact in you would like a shell account.


(4) Profiles

(a) systemd support
I'm not sure that systemd works on ia64 though it is keyworded. I will 
test it in a week or so. If it is not working, then I propose to drop 
support and move to eudev. I'd like to support if possible. The systemd 
team recently created a systemd only profile (without a desktop) so it 
might be a candidate.

(b) gnome/kde desktop support
I'd like to propose dropping support for gnome/kde desktop (assuming its 
keyworded - I've not checked). My personal system at home and the one I 
rescued at work, don't have its own video card. In fact, they are both 
servers. I looked on ebay and couldn't find a "desktop" ia64 system for 
sale. I imagine this is a endangered species. I could put a video card 
in it, but note sure it makes sense long term nor have developer 
resources to continue to keyword it. Perhaps, reducing the desktop to 
just xfce4 or xorg/fluxbox would work. I'm open to others opinions.

(c) java support
The java team said they don't have cycles to support ia64. There a 
number of keyworded packages (around 100). Support would have to come 
from the ia64 team or the community. Unless someone steps up to help out 
with java, I'll propose to drop support on ia64. Thanks to the java team 
for helping us know what needs to be done to support java or not.


(5) anything else?
Is there anything I missed? Other sections of gentoo?



[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ia64/2014/02/msg00000.html
[2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Infrastructure/Developer_Machines


Thanks,

-- 
Jack Morgan
Pub 4096R/761D8E0A 2010-09-13 Jack Morgan <jmorgan@g.o>
Fingerprint = DD42 EA48 D701 D520 C2CD 55BE BF53 C69B 761D 8E0A