[Oy vey, crosspost list from hell -- not sure how to trim...] On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 09:46:21PM +0100, Gregor Riepl wrote: > I do think this just reinforces the point that second-class architectures > should have better, more robust support from the Debian project.
> For example, arch-specific packages most decidedly have a place in Debian > The build and package delivery infrastructure should offer the same features > for both first and second class archs, including installer image building for > all "tiers" (stable, testing, unstable). It seems to me that the important bit is the testing suite. As a (now lapsed) x32 porter, I tried to implement that on my own (goal being an unofficial, weakly security supported[1] Jessie for x32). And tracking testing on my own proved to be too hard. What directly defeated me were binNMUs: with every arch having its own NMU counter and hidden triggers, this is already a mess. Add NMUs due to private ported packages, and all hell breaks loose. The rest is easy in comparison: a porter team can decide whether to snapshot testing as unofficial stable; point releases are a matter of running a buildd job (and fixing failures), same for security. We'd be able to concentrate on actual arch-specific issues. > The main difference should (IMHO) be the amount of support you get: While a > first-class arch will get faster fixes and a more stable dependency tree, > other archs will be more "sloppy", for example by not blocking stable releases > with their own RC bugs etc. Yeah, a completely one-way relationship: no issue on second-class would block first-class. > If this can be fulfilled, I don't think being a second-class arch will be such > a big deal. Not sure how far Debian is from this goal, but I can understand > that many DDs and DMs would rather invest their time into projects they have a > stake in, rather than hardware they don't (or don't want to?) understand. Yes, x32 suffers from needing obscure and hard to get hardware. :) Meow! [1]. The vast majority of security issues are non arch dependent, so blindly tracking and building first-class security updates gets us nearly all the way, reducing the work to babysitting buildds and looking into FTBFSes or yet another whole-new-language-ecosystem getting allowed into stable. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Ivan was a worldly man: born in St. Petersburg, raised in ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ Petrograd, lived most of his life in Leningrad, then returned ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ to the city of his birth to die.
