Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Luk Claes]

Gianluca Bonetti wrote:
> Hello world!
> 
> I volunteer for some work in the project.
> If commitment is of some hours a week, I think I could manage it.

Well, the commitment needed depends on the issues that arise...

> Just a last consideration... it is well known that Alpha platform has 
> to come to an end, sooner or later, but I think the time is not now.
> With some effort, we could keep Debian support for Alpha up to the 
> Squeeze release.

This would mean getting it out of testing now and not release it with
Squeeze as support is meant to continue for an old release up till the
next release + 1 year (at least for security and critical issues).

Cheers

Luk


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Aurelien Jarno]

Steve Langasek a écrit :
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:01:52PM +1300, Michael Cree wrote:
>
> It's not out of the question that this might happen before March.  I don't
> know that the removal of alpha is going to be instantaneous, either;
> furthermore, removing alpha from the archive doesn't preclude building an
> unofficial alpha version of squeeze, perhaps of a hand-picked, reduced set
> of packages.  If people are interested, it's possible something could be
> worked out with debian-ports.org.
> 

While hosting an architecture on debian-ports.org is fully possible,
please note that it needs more manpower, as you have to deal with
scheduling binNMU for transitions, and with emails and/or NMU to get
patches applied (as long as an architecture does not block the migration
to testing, most maintainers stop to care about it).

As it seems the lack of manpower is clearly the problem on the alpha
port, this means a move to debian-ports.org implies a reduced set of
packages.

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Aurelien Jarno  GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73
aurel...@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Gianluca Bonetti]

Hello world!

I volunteer for some work in the project.
If commitment is of some hours a week, I think I could manage it.

I had a look at the open bugs in the last weeks and I can tell that 
many are related to ancient software.
All of the kernel related bugs are of ancient releases (2.6.14, 2.6.22) 
and has been fixed with later releases.

Others are unreproducible, like the one about "lightspeed" package.

Others are not only related to alpha.
For example, "xmovie does not build on alpha".
xmovie does not build anywhere, neither alpha, nor i386.
BTW, do we need xmovie?
vlc, totem and mplayer are more advanced players.

I will go deeper in testing with this bugs in the next days, and file 
bugreports about what I discover.

About the lack of Java support, it is true that Java runs in 
interpreted mode, but still, there is an openjdk-6 package which is in 
working state.
It is able to work out with simple applications, and also for running 
netbeans 6.5.
And it is the first time since years, that we have a complete, working 
and free java environment on Alpha Linux.
Overall performance of the interpreted virtual machine is really good 
for small applications.
Netbeans performance is good (however not fast) at least on DS20.

Just a last consideration... it is well known that Alpha platform has 
to come to an end, sooner or later, but I think the time is not now.
With some effort, we could keep Debian support for Alpha up to the 
Squeeze release.
Then we could start an unofficial port continuing the work, but for a 
smaller number of packages and not the whole 22000 packages which are 
in the offical repositories right now.

Best regards
Gianluca Bonetti


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Re: Re : squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[maximilian attems]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 09:59:31AM +0100, Arthur Loiret wrote:
> 
> 2009/2/20, Steve Langasek :
> > Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
> > in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
> > for squeeze.
> 
> I am volunteer to apply as alpha porter. I have several alpha machines
> of my own, which makes it easy to debug a failure on alpha.

no only due to the demand post release,
it is good to rethink the end of life of alpha.
 
> > I've cc:ed everyone who listed themselves as an alpha porter for etch on
> > , to make sure
> > anyone willing to do the work on alpha for Squeeze has an opportunity to do
> > so.  But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
> > couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
> > team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.
> 
> I can provide access to some hardware if anybody else is interested in
> contributing to the alpha port.

it be cool to have a kernel alpha buildserver so that alpha
get autobuild before upload.

i'd volounteer in refreshing the config settings for alpha on linux-2.6
side, they haven't seen care for quite some time.

kind regards

-- 
maks


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Re : squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Arthur Loiret]

Hi,

2009/2/20, Steve Langasek :
> Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
> in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
> for squeeze.

I am volunteer to apply as alpha porter. I have several alpha machines
of my own, which makes it easy to debug a failure on alpha.

> I linked to
> 
> as a starting point for folks to get involved in trying to help with the
> alpha port if they want to see it continue in squeeze.  Well, only 9 of
> those bugs have been closed in the past year, with 31 other bugs open, not
> to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
> like the lack of Java support and the general absence of a porter community.

I will have a look to them this week. Talking about upstream support,
Andrew Morton is not giving up the alpha port and always apply patches
very fast. On the gcc side, Uros Bizjak has fixed nearly all major
issues in the alpha port, and the glibc can be built with recent gcc
versions again.

I've also setup an alpha buildd to check all FTBFS (using quinn-diff),
already 138 packages built since yesterday evening :-)

> I've cc:ed everyone who listed themselves as an alpha porter for etch on
> , to make sure
> anyone willing to do the work on alpha for Squeeze has an opportunity to do
> so.  But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
> couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
> team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.

I can provide access to some hardware if anybody else is interested in
contributing to the alpha port.

Thanks,

Arthur.


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 10:01:52PM +1300, Michael Cree wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:

>> Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
>> in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
>> for squeeze.

> What is involved in this job?

Collectively, the porters are responsible for:

 - keeping the arch-specific bootloader (aboot) in working order
 - maintaining the arch-specific installer components
 - maintaining the architecture's kernel build
 - fixing the toolchain (in collaboration with upstream) if it breaks
 - making sure packages are generally building sanely, and fixing
   architecture-related build failures
   (,
   )
 - Working on architecture-specific bugs in packages (e.g.,
   
)

> What is the time commitment?

Varies widely.  I think I averaged less than 3 hours a week (possibly much
less) through the etch cycle and the beginning of the lenny cycle.

> What is the needed experience?

While folks who aren't DDs won't be turned away from helping, in practice
there needs to be a certain critical mass of DDs working on a port since
it's important to be able to do uploads directly when needed.

Otherwise, reviewing the debian-alpha list archives over the past few years
probably gives as good an indication as any of the kind of bugs that need to
be dealt with.

>>   But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
>> couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
>> team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.

> Ouch!   Just when the patches to provide PCI resource files under sysfs  
> on Alpha have materialised, and I was so looking forward to the new  
> xserver propagating through to unstable and testing. 

It's not out of the question that this might happen before March.  I don't
know that the removal of alpha is going to be instantaneous, either;
furthermore, removing alpha from the archive doesn't preclude building an
unofficial alpha version of squeeze, perhaps of a hand-picked, reduced set
of packages.  If people are interested, it's possible something could be
worked out with debian-ports.org.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Michael Cree]

Steve Langasek wrote:


Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
for squeeze.
  


What is involved in this job?  What is the time commitment?  What is the 
needed experience?


Up to now I have only being doing testing and some basic debugging, but 
only in packages that are particularly of interest to me.  I am now 
starting to get familiar with the Debian package build tools.



I linked to

as a starting point for folks to get involved in trying to help with the
alpha port if they want to see it continue in squeeze.


I believe I am capable of tracking down some of those bugs, but I won't 
be able to make a start for at least another two months or so due to 
other commitments I have at the moment.



  But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.
  


Ouch!   Just when the patches to provide PCI resource files under sysfs 
on Alpha have materialised, and I was so looking forward to the new 
xserver propagating through to unstable and testing. 


Michael.


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 01:52:03PM +0100, Oliver Falk wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
>> [ ... ] not
>> to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
>> like the lack of Java support

> gcj and openjdk work fine in Fedora. AFAIK, Gentoo also has Java for  
> Alpha. So it shouldn't be to hard to get it running on Debian!

Heh - interestingly, gcj-4.3 builds have been reenabled on alpha in Debian
as of January 31 - so only in unstable, too late for the lenny release.  But
is there good reason to think this will remain in good shape throughout the
squeeze development cycle?

Cheers,
-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Matt Turner]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Oliver Falk  wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
>>
>> [ ... ] not
>> to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
>> like the lack of Java support
>
> gcj and openjdk work fine in Fedora. AFAIK, Gentoo also has Java for Alpha.
> So it shouldn't be to hard to get it running on Debian!

In theory, Java should work on Gentoo, but we've never put any effort
into it. I don't think it should be a priority over things like glibc
and X.Org.

>> and the general absence of a porter community.
>
> Well. Gentoo is still porting and Fedora (esp. Jay and /me) also.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> I'd like to mention; *I* often saw patches that helped me solve (Alpha)
> problems on Fedora. So. If there's no Debian Alpha port, my (Fedora Alpha)
> 'work' will get harder :-) Of course not if the Debian Alpha folks switch to
> Fedora... :-P

Looks like this is again a call for a central place for patches. Then
again, there is a serious lack of actual developers for Alpha. I'll
see what I can figure out.

Matt Turner

>
> -of
>
>
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Re: squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Oliver Falk]

Steve Langasek wrote:

[ ... ] not
to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
like the lack of Java support


gcj and openjdk work fine in Fedora. AFAIK, Gentoo also has Java for 
Alpha. So it shouldn't be to hard to get it running on Debian!


> and the general absence of a porter community.

Well. Gentoo is still porting and Fedora (esp. Jay and /me) also.

[ ... ]

I'd like to mention; *I* often saw patches that helped me solve (Alpha) 
problems on Fedora. So. If there's no Debian Alpha port, my (Fedora 
Alpha) 'work' will get harder :-) Of course not if the Debian Alpha 
folks switch to Fedora... :-P


-of


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squeeze and the future of the alpha port, redux

[Steve Langasek]

Dear Alpha fans,

In August of last year, I posed the question to the debian-alpha mailing
list:  should Debian continue to support an alpha port following the release
of lenny?

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha/2008/08/msg4.html

As would be expected when making such a post to the debian-alpha list, there
were a number of responses from users who expressed dismay at the prospect
of Debian no longer supporting alpha in squeeze.

Also unsurprisingly (to me, given my observations that had led to the post
in the first place), no one else has yet stepped up to be an alpha porter
for squeeze.

I linked to

as a starting point for folks to get involved in trying to help with the
alpha port if they want to see it continue in squeeze.  Well, only 9 of
those bugs have been closed in the past year, with 31 other bugs open, not
to mention the serious problems of the port's viability implied by things
like the lack of Java support and the general absence of a porter community.

For Lenny, I was the sole Debian developer willing to put his name down as a
porter on .  For
Squeeze, I am not willing to put my name down without a significant show of
committment on the part of other developers.  By all rights, alpha shouldn't
even have released with Lenny given the state of its porter support; it's
effectively coasted for the past year (I haven't even had a running alpha
for the past five months owing to a hardware failure), and I don't want to
see it coast its way into Squeeze.

I've cc:ed everyone who listed themselves as an alpha porter for etch on
, to make sure
anyone willing to do the work on alpha for Squeeze has an opportunity to do
so.  But in the absence of some demonstration of committment in the next
couple of weeks, on March 7 I'll plan to ask the ftp team and the release
team to drop alpha from the archive for testing and unstable.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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