Re: What's the plan for powerpc64 in FreeBSD 16

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 09:57:57AM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> ...
> We have trouble building packages for it.

Just demote it to tier-3 so we don't even try to provide packages,
but I'd like to see ppc{32,64} kept alive for two reasons, other
than being a sentimental favorite for a number of FreeBSD folks. :-)

PPC takes a kind of special place among other no longer mainstream
arches due to mass production of good quality Apple hardware which
is scattered around the world and is still useful as a backup boxen,
NAS, etc. despite no longer competitive performance while you can
still plug and rotate modern disks and network cards.

> Also, powerpc has a number of interesting features of the
> architecture that make it the odd arch out.

Which I see as a plus: weird hardware helps to hunt obscure bugs.

> It's also big endian. While that may seem like a reason to keep
> it around, if we really can't support it and we're not actively
> testing functionality of the system, then keeping this around
> actually doesn't help keep us honest.

This is my second reason to keep it around: different endianness,
char signness, 32-bitness force one to write well-typed, correct,
sound code.

> My questions today: Are you using this port?

I use both ppc32 (Mac mini G4, actively) and ppc64 (G5, currently
offline due to known military conflict).

./danfe