Re: [gentoo-dev] Sparc Arch status

On 2016-08-15 22:54, Jack Morgan wrote:
> Following up to my email from a year ago....
>
>
> We do have some people in the community who are interested in sparc. In
> fact, we have one kernel developer who would like to get multilib
> working.
>
> In addition, I have two who are interested in helping by being arch
> testers (AT).
>
>

I have made new profiles for sparc. They support 32bit / 64bit userland 
and multilib both ways. I have yet to run into any major issues.

I need to finish up my developer application however.

>> (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.
>
> We really need an updated ISO and stage tarballs.

I have some from ~February, i'm not opposed to making more.

>> (a) systemd support
>> I tried for several days to get systemd working on sparc. systemd just
>> seg faulted on boot up. In fact, I had trouble getting udev to start.
>> It
>> just produced an error "ignoring: Invalid argument error initializing
>> netlink socket" and didn't start. Since udev didn't start, i was not
>> able to log in nor ssh (no network interface found). I made the switch
>> to eudev and eudev started just fine. I'll file a couple of bugs in a
>> week and go from there. I'll work with the systemd team to resolve
>> these
>> problems.
>
> No update here and not sure of the status as I need to investigate

Should be fine with a kernel newer than 3.16, i only tested with a 64bit 
userland however

>> (b) gnome/kde desktop support
>> I'd like to propose dropping support for gnome/kde desktop if systemd
>> isn't supported on sparc. I'm note sure it makes sense long term nor
>> have developer resources to continue to keyword it. I have a couple of
>> desktop systems so can test easily but running xfce4 atm. I'm open to
>> others opinions.
>
> I'm going to drop support for all desktops except xfce4. If someone
> else
> wants to help out and support another desktop, they are free to join
> the
> team and do so.

No comment here, i have not attempted to build any DE's on sparc.

>> (c) java support
>> The java team said they don't have cycles to support sparc. Support
>> would have to come from the sparc team or the community. Unless
>> someone
>> steps up to help out with java, I'll propose to drop support on sparc.
>> Thanks to the java team for helping us know what needs to be done to
>> support java or not.
>
> Support already dropped last year. Thanks java team.

Debian has java working on sparc64, maybe we should take a look at that?

> I need to schedule the annual arch team meeting to elect the arch lead.
> Current members are are listed below. If you are not actively working
> on
> sparc, then please update you status.
>
> Lead(s)	none  (No lead election date set)
>
>
> Members
> Agostino Sarubbo (ago) -  Security bugs primarily )
> Jeroen Roovers (jer) - ( Porting )
> Jack Morgan (jmorgan) - ( Gentoo/SPARC )
> Pacho Ramos (Pacho) - ( Gentoo/SPARC )
> Mike Frysinger (vapier) - ( Core-only )
> Michael Weber (xmw) - ( Gentoo/SPARC )
> Mikle Kolyada (Zlogene) - ( Gentoo/SPARC )
>
>
>
>> [1]https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Infrastructure/Developer_Machines
>
> Thanks,

I'm up for any position you need. After i have the developer status 
worked out i plan to share quite a bit of code. I've been working 
silently for too long.