Creating armv7 MACHINE_ARCH

[Warner Losh]

Clearly, we woke up one day and realized Ian was right? And he's only been
saying it since pre R11 since that was the first release that supported it.
There was no armv6 support in 10. Ask a snarky question, get a snarky
answer...

What's changed is that the port has gone from being mainly used by people
that had an rpi that supported a bunch of other platforms (including Ian's
iMX6) to a port that's used primarily by armv7 machines (including the
rpi2) that also happens to support the rpi (which is the only !armv7
platform). When Ian started saying it, rpi was one of the better supported
platforms as well. Now with all the Allwinner support, improved iMX6
support, and the rpi2 being armv7, we are now in a situation where most
users and most of the good support is on that platform. What's also changed
is Andrew's work on having a GENERIC kernel. We'd have a GENERIC one for
ARMv6 too: It's the RPI config :).

Plus, we aren't quite doing what Ian wanted. He wanted a full rename. The
proposal on the able is to add an armv7 TARGET_ARCH in 12. Not to rename or
remove armv6. Sadly, that will still be there since the RPI foundation
keeps finding new ways to repackage the rpi into new boards that are just
too cheap to ignore.

Warner

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 9:28 AM, Russell Haley <russ.haley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry for the top post.
>
> Hasn't Ian Lapore been saying this since pre R10?‎ I seems to remember
> people doing backflips to get around this‎ heading up to that release and
> it was considered to much effort. Can I ask what has changed?
>
> Russ
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the Virgin Mobile network.
>   Original Message
> From: Warner Losh
> Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2017 1:27 PM
> To: freebsd-arm at freebsd.org
> Subject: Creating armv7 MACHINE_ARCH
>
> While the kernel doesn't really need an armv7 support, there will be a
> better match to other systems if we create a armv7 MACHINE_ARCH. This will
> be in addition to the armv6 MACHINE_ARCH we have today. This will allow us
> to create a package set optimized for armv7 as well as armv6. While it is
> true the RPI 1 is the only system that needs armv6 binaries, it's quite
> popular and the Raspberry Pi folks keep creating new variants with the same
> chip. It would also let us get the package stuff spun up and working before
> we mess with armv6.
>
> This would also separate the fate of armv6 and armv7 support at a later
> time, but the weak consensus I've heard appears to be that the time isn't
> yet right to discuss retiring armv6 support...
>
> Warner
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