Re: FreeBSD 14: Poll armv6 deprecated or removed

On 2021-Oct-28 09:37:03 -0600, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>Given that the number of available and useful armv6 boards has fallen to
>almost zero, the time has come to look hard at armv6.

So far as I can tell, the only supported armv6 boards are the RPi
variants using the BCM2835.  According to Wikipedia, most of these
boards are still available but when I look at the Element14 and RS
websites, the only board I can find is the Compute Module (though
it's on backorder).

What is the direct benefit of removing the armv6 code?  When 80386
removal was proposed, it included an explanation of the benefits
of getting rid of all the support code in the VM subsystem.

Another point that may be relevant is that when GCC introduced support
for the ARMv6KZ architecture, it misspelt it as ARMv6ZK.  Whilst the
typo was corrected in GCC and never existed in Clang, the misspelling
has leaked into a variety of FOSS - including contrib code in FreeBSD.
Such code will either be missing relevant optimisations or, at worst,
fail to compile on/for the RPi.

>1. Keep it as is.
>2. Stop building packages.
>2a. We should likely do this anyway for all stable branches
>3. Disconnect it from universe:
>4. Remove support for armv6 in base entirely.
>
>So, which of these steps do we do before FreeBSD 14 and which before
>FreeBSD 15?
>
>My vote would be to do 1-4 for 14 including 2a.

Since FreeBSD-13 will be supported until early 2026, by which time the
supported RPi hardware will be 10 years old, it would seem reasonable
to remove armv6 prior to FreeBSD-14.

-- 
Peter Jeremy