Re: Question on future armv7 support

On Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:03:46 +0000
Michał Kruszewski <mkru@protonmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> In February 2024, it was announced that FreeBSD is dropping support
> for 32-bit platforms. This seems reasonable as probably no one
> launches new projects on i386, armv6, or powerpc. However, the story
> with armv7 is a little bit different.
> 
> Armv7 is omnipresent on SoC platforms with FPGAs.
> Not so long ago, AMD extended the lifecycle of its 7 Series SoCs to
> 2040. I started using FreeBSD on 32-bit armv7 SoC platforms a few
> weeks ago. My experience is surprisingly good.
> It is much easier to use and maintain than the official PetaLinux
> released by AMD.
> 
> I would like to incorporate FreeBSD into embedded classes at the
> university. I am also thinking about using it in a commercial project.
> However, the uncertainty of future support for armv7 makes me
> reluctant.
> 
> Does anyone have more up-to-date information on whether armv7 support
> will also be dropped and potentially when?
> 
> I have also recently noticed that FreeBSD journal issues from May to
> December 2024 had columns dedicated to embedded FreeBSD. All of them
> were written by Christopher R. Bowman, and utilized Zynq-7000 SoC,
> which is armv7 based. I thought that the FreeBSD Foundation's actions
> are somehow coordinated with the FreeBSD development. What would be
> the point of promoting something that a few months earlier was marked
> as a 'potentially deprecated'.
> 

See https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ for official statement about
platform support. Also https://www.freebsd.org/releases/15.0R/schedule/
for upcomming 15.0-RELEASE schedule.

Also note you can help to extend support for armv7 platform with your
work in any area of your choice - drivers, docs, testing etc.

Regards,
Milan