Re: FreeBSD 14: Poll armv6 deprecated or removed

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 12:23 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 10:48 AM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry for the lag of a year, it's been a crazy time for me and this fell
>> through the cracks.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 9:37 AM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> Given that the number of available and useful armv6 boards has fallen to
>>> almost zero, the time has come to look hard at armv6.
>>>
>>> There's a number of options.
>>>
>>> 1. Keep it as is. This will only happen if there's a lot more users than
>>> we think (and we think there's nearly zero users of FreeBSD 13 and newer
>>> that would want to run FreeBSD 14).
>>>
>>> 2. Stop building packages. Given it's small to non-existent user base,
>>> it makes no sense to provide a package building service for it.
>>> 2a. We should likely do this anyway for all stable branches since it's a
>>> net negative in terms of cost/benefit analysis: lots of effort to produce,
>>> very little use.
>>>
>>> 3. Disconnect it from universe: This will mean it will rot, though. It's
>>> a necessary step in removal.
>>>
>>> 4. Remove support for armv6 in base entirely. This will orphan any RPiB
>>> and RPi0 users out there. However, the RPiB hasn't been sold in a few
>>> years, and the RPI0's connectivity is severely lacking given no SDIO
>>> support.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> After discussing this offline and distilling the responses here, on IRC,
>> etc, I'd like to propose we do the following:
>>
>> (1) Stop building packages for armv6 entirely, on all branches. While
>> there are some users, they can still use poudriere to build package sets
>> themselves. Usage data suggests there's not enough demand for these
>> packages.
>> (2) Move armv6 to an 'EXTRA' target in make universe (eg make universe
>> EXTRA_TARGETS=t). Powerpc does this today with powerpcspe since it's not
>> completely supported in base. People that care can continue to build it as
>> part of universe and we'll fix things that are broken, reported to us and
>> have patches that don't regress other platforms.
>> (3) After the stable/14 branch next May or June, we'll remove build
>> support from ports (very little) and src. We'll also start to tear down
>> armv6 support as we see it and are working in other areas, and expect that
>> work to be done before stable/15 is branched in a predicted 2025.
>> (4) Immediately stop including armv6 -current snapshots as generated by
>> re@.
>> (5) re@ won't create armv6 release images or artifacts for stable/14,
>> 14.0, etc. Users wishing to build it can do so.
>>
>
> Oh, and #6: Demote armv6 (but not armv7) to tier 3. It's been kinda
> de-facto there for a while anyway, and this will make the signalling clear
> that the runway for armv6 is running out.
>

As a reminder: this is only the original Raspberry Pi B and the original Pi
0 models. Supported replacements for both of these are available from
Raspberry and other vendors.

Warner


>
>> I've send email to re@ asking about #4 and #5.
>>
>> Warner
>>
>