BSDInstall: merging to HEAD

Ade Lovett ade at FreeBSD.org
Sat Jan 15 06:58:46 UTC 2011


On Jan 14, 2011, at 19:31 , Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
> On Jan 14, 2011, at 10:26 AM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> 
>> The final architecture on which we use sysinstall, ia64, is currently unsupported, because I don't know how to set up booting on those systems -- patches to solve this are very much welcome.
> 
> Don't let this stop you. I'll work with you on this after the dust
> has settled.

Just out of random curiosity.  Seriously.

Exactly why, short of "of course it runs", in which case NetBSD is --> way, why are we even trying to handle ia64 as a platform, regardless of tier, when it is patently obvious that it is going absolutely _nowhere_ in terms of a viable platform?

I ask the question in all seriousness.   Ports/Packages, well, a decent amount of them won't work on anything less than (i386|amd64) but that's nothing new.  But even spending time building them for, what, the <200 (I'm being generous) folks that run FreeBSD/ia64.

We _have_ a 64-bit platform.  It's /amd.  The fact that even as we speak, random chip manufacturers are banging out new P4/Xeon processors conforming to this standard, years after they had a vague chance to steal the server market, indicates that this line is dead. _dead_. DEAD.

At least I can pick up a box for <$50 from ebay and run /sparc64 on it.  Say the same for /ia64?  Didn't think so.

Nuke it.  From orbit.  With extreme prejudice.

-aDe



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