Re: Future of 32-bit platforms (including i386)

On Sat, Jun 3, 2023, 10:44 AM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> On May 31, 2023, at 10:30, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 10:09 AM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Emmanuel Vadot <manu_at_bidouilliste.com> wrote on
> > Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 06:35:55 UTC :
> >
> > > . . .
> > >
> > > I personnaly see armv7 in "degraded maintainance mode" since 13.0,
> > > nothing really intersting was added, no new SoC support even if there
> > > was some interesting one that we could support, no new drivers for
> > > supported platforms. We even lost TI BeagleBone support because no one
> > > really have the time to keep support up to date.
> > > I still have some little cute boards that I want to use from time to
> > > time but the lack of proper porting of new language (like rust and iirc
> > > go have problems too) is making new software unusable on those boards
> > > (you can't even make some "smart speaker" for spotify as all the
> > > spotify clients are in rust).
> > > IMX6 support is stalled since ian@ passed away and mmel@ isn't very
> > > active atm and they were both the most actives developers for armv7 low
> > > level code.
> >
> > One of the things for tier 2 is:
> > (from https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/committers-guide/#archs
> > 21.4. Tier 2 section)
> >
> > QUOTE
> > Collectively, developers are required to provide the following
> > to maintain the Tier 2 status of a platform:
> >
> >     • Tier 2 architectures must have an active ecosystem of users and
> developers.
> > END QUOTE
> >
> > Is there an implication that, even for 14, the "developers"
> > part of that for armv7 has dropped off to the point that
> > tier 2 would reasonably be in question?
> >
> > For the 14 branch, armv7 seems to be right on the edge. Some
> > bugs do get fixed, but some of the SoCs are so poorly maintained
> > that they don't work anymore (for whatever reason). So "degraded
> > maintenance mode" is likely apt for 14: it will still work, mostly, but
> > many cool new things that people want, both in terms of languages
> > and new hardware support will be lacking in some way, shape or
> > form. Tier 2 is likely still the best tier to keep it at, imho.
> >
>
> One thing I was unsure of is how much the choice is driven
> by things as they are at around releng/14.0 vs. what things
> might be expected to be like around, say, releng/14.4 (a
> number of years later). It appears that changing tier status
> is normally avoided for the likes of 14.[1-4] .
>

A lot of it is sticking your finger in the air and projecting out 4 years.
If nobody is going to be making any fixes and the code doesn't work at that
point, we are better off killing it now. For armv7, I still see bug fixes
happening, but anticipate that any bad bug that pops up may not het fixed.
I see no new hardware support absent some unforeseen resurgence.

I suspect when we branch 15, it's 4 years out prospects will be even worse.
But I don't know that for sure.

Warner

===
> Mark Millard
> marklmi at yahoo.com
>
>