Re: Future of 32-bit platforms (including i386) [armv7 specific note]

John Baldwin <jhb_at_FreeBSD.org> wrote on
Date: Tue, 23 May 2023 23:46:51 UTC :
 
> On 4/27/23 10:19 AM, John Baldwin wrote:
> > For 13.0, i386 was demoted from Tier 1 to Tier 2. In the announcement
> > of this for 13.0, the project committed to an update on i386's future
> > around the time of 14.0. The announcement at the time suggested that
> > i386 would be supported less in 14.x than in 13.x.
> > 
> > My proposal is that for 14.x we treat i386 like any other Tier 2
> > platform. That is, release images and packages would only be provided
> > on a best-effort basis, and we would not guarantee providing them. I
> > think we should also stop shipping binary updates for the base system
> > (freebsd-update) for 14.x for i386.
> > 
> > A larger question is what to do about 32-bit platforms moving forward.
> > My proposal for powerpc, i386, and armv[67] is that we say publicly
> > that we anticipate not supporting them in 15. That is, that we may
> > remove them outright from the tree, or we may leave them in the tree,
> > but we do not plan on building packages or release images. Another
> > option to consider for 32-bit platforms perhaps in 15 is to remove
> > kernel support and only retain the ability to build userland. The
> > goal of saying this now-ish (or about the time 14.0 is going to ship)
> > would be to give time for users and developers to respond in the
> > window between 14.0 and 15.0 so we can evaluate those responses as an
> > input into the final decision for 15.
> 
> We discussed this topic during the 15.0 developer summit and the consensus
> among the folks present (which is only a subset of our community), is
> that there is still interest in supporting armv7 kernels in 15.0, but not
> kernels for other platforms. In addition, no one expressed a need for
> full 32-bit world support for i386 and powerpc, only for compat32 support
> in the kernel, and lib32 (cc -m32) support in userland.

(Prompted by manu's
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arch/2023-May/000454.html .)

I'll note that armv7 does not now have lib32 support
for aarch64's that support EL0 AArch32. That would be
a development effort.

armv7 can be used via the likes of chrooting into a
armv7 world's directory tree for such aarch64's. That
is what I do on aarch64 for armv7.

> One question for this is if we think we will have sufficient developer
> resources to maintain armv7 kernels for the life of stable/15.

Sufficient developer support to get lib32 supporting
armv7 in place and keep it operational?

> We can
> largely punt on the final decision for that until close to the release of
> 15.0.

But for armv7 lib32 development time?

> I think for what we announce for 14.0 we can still say that we
> are generally planning to remove 32-bit kernel and world support in 15.0,
> but may consider keeping armv7.


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com