Armeb removal before 12

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Rodney W. Grimes <
freebsd-rwg at pdx.rh.cn85.dnsmgr.net> wrote:

> > I'd like to remove armeb before 12.0.
> >
> > It's poorly supported today.
> >
> > Nobody has tested the concurrency kit changes on it. And ck is now
> > mandatory. We don't even know if it works or not.
> >
> > Last time we asked, it took quite a while to find users.
> >
> > It maxes out at 256MB of RAM. This is barely large enough for FreeBSD to
> > run in.
>
> 64MB is usable for 32 bit archs, I have many VM's running in
> that configuration, so this item should not be in this list.


Yes and no. A VM is a different beast to a real box. arm requires more
memory in general, and a little more on real machines.

You can run it in 128MB and do useful things, but not very many things. One
cannot, for example, run a wifi access point on arm in 128MB, at least on
this hardware. Adrian's ultra-stripped down stuff might be possible, but
nobody has ported it to this hardware despite it being ported to many weird
things. Likewise with the ZRouter project. You could run a simple sshd /
dns server on it, but there's lots of other alternatives for that which are
dirt cheap.

One can, with a lot of effort, do 64MB too, but it's more effort than for
i386. Even at 64MB on i386, though, the number of things you can do is
quite limited. You can't build anything on that machine. DNS + SSH is
possible here as well, as long as the zones are too big.

So I'll concede the point it's possible, and I'm not looking to make it not
be possible. However, we do need to draw the line somewhere, and this is
but one factor of many. Were it the only factor here, we wouldn't be
contemplating removal. Most people want to do more ambitious things that
can be done in 256MB is all I was trying to say.

> The hardware was last made almost a decade ago.
> >
> > It uses non-standard non-mainstream boot loaders (boot technology has
> moved
> > on from redboot).
> >
> > The cost of doing API sweeps, make universe runs, etc exceeds the benefit
> > to the project.
> >
> > So, given all these factors, it sounds like a good candidate for
> retirement.
> >
> > Therefore, I'd like to remove it on July 15th.
> >
> > Comments? (please keep  them on topic to this specific thing: there's
> other
> > things that may also be past their freshness date, we'll discuss those
> in a
> > separate thread).
>
> Given all the other valid reasons, I have no objection to removal of armeb.


Excellent.

Warner