The state of FreeBSD/ia64

[Marcel Moolenaar]

All,

Triggered by the recent problem reports about booting FreeBSD/ia64
on Montecito and ongoing general FreeBSD development I found myself
wondering about the future of the FreeBSD/ia64 port. While I do not
intend to stop developing for FreeBSD/ia64 anytime soon, it's also
not at all sure that I'll have the motivation to keep things in
shape. This is further complicated by the fact that without access
to recent hardware, all I will be doing is testing if what used to
work still works. All I'm doing then is to keep it in shape for me,
which means that on the whole FreeBSD/ia64 will regress anyway.

Let me acknowledge Rick Jones' support at this time. He may have
saved the day with respect to the upcoming FreeBSD 7.0 release when
it comes to recent HP hardware. Thanks Rick!

Nonetheless, the two major problems that I can see exist are:
1.  Lack of developers -- I don't doubt that there are a number of
     qualified people out that that would love to experiment with
     and develop for FreeBSD/ia64. Lack of affordable hardware or
     sponsorship of hardware is probably the one reason why we don't
     see them.
2.  Lack of hardware -- Itanium is big-iron. Joe Hacker is not
     going to find a box at Fry's. It's that simple. I've considered
     buying a box for myself, but frankly even I don't want to spend
     the money. What I need to test FreeBSD is beyond my budget and
     once FreeBSD works, I don't need a machine that big to use it
     for development.

So, I'm looking for support. Any kind of support. But before I can
ask for support, I really need to ask other questions first:

Is there a point? For whom am I doing this if not to satisfy my
own interest? What's the user base? Is there one? Will there be
a (bigger) user base if FreeBSD/ia64 supports hardware X or
feature Y?

So, please, if you use FreeBSD/ia64 in one form or another let
me know. If possible, describe how you use FreeBSD/ia64.

Also, if you don't (yet) use FreeBSD/ia64 because there's some
missing functionality or support, I would like to hear that too.

If I don't receive any response to this email, I can pretty much
only assume that no-one is interested and that there's no user
base. The future of FreeBSD/ia64 is then heavily dependent upon
my interests and motivation and the (random) kind acts of some
individual(s).

If, on the other hand, there's an active (though silent) user
base then it may be worthwhile to try and find a solution for
the hardware access. If a solution exists, then not only will
we have a chance to grow the user base (more hardware is
supported, so less users will need to run something else),
there may also be a chance to attrack new developers. The
latter again may help grow overall support, which may attrack
users again.

Thanks to everyone who have contributed to get FreeBSD/ia64 to
this point.

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
xcllnt at mac.com