Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 12:33:57 -0700 From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: 'freebsd-arch' <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Future of 32-bit platforms (including i386) Message-ID: <e1afe877-1542-387e-84bf-d8c14d3c3cf1@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <5a08b091-a1a5-1928-18e1-16c3bddb1a7f@FreeBSD.org> References: <aaa3e005-5f72-f422-56b1-932842379e15@FreeBSD.org> <5a08b091-a1a5-1928-18e1-16c3bddb1a7f@FreeBSD.org>
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On 5/23/23 4:46 PM, John Baldwin wrote: > On 4/27/23 10:19 AM, John Baldwin wrote: >> For 13.0, i386 was demoted from Tier 1 to Tier 2. In the announcement >> of this for 13.0, the project committed to an update on i386's future >> around the time of 14.0. The announcement at the time suggested that >> i386 would be supported less in 14.x than in 13.x. >> >> My proposal is that for 14.x we treat i386 like any other Tier 2 >> platform. That is, release images and packages would only be provided >> on a best-effort basis, and we would not guarantee providing them. I >> think we should also stop shipping binary updates for the base system >> (freebsd-update) for 14.x for i386. >> >> A larger question is what to do about 32-bit platforms moving forward. >> My proposal for powerpc, i386, and armv[67] is that we say publicly >> that we anticipate not supporting them in 15. That is, that we may >> remove them outright from the tree, or we may leave them in the tree, >> but we do not plan on building packages or release images. Another >> option to consider for 32-bit platforms perhaps in 15 is to remove >> kernel support and only retain the ability to build userland. The >> goal of saying this now-ish (or about the time 14.0 is going to ship) >> would be to give time for users and developers to respond in the >> window between 14.0 and 15.0 so we can evaluate those responses as an >> input into the final decision for 15. > > We discussed this topic during the 15.0 developer summit and the consensus > among the folks present (which is only a subset of our community), is > that there is still interest in supporting armv7 kernels in 15.0, but not > kernels for other platforms. In addition, no one expressed a need for > full 32-bit world support for i386 and powerpc, only for compat32 support > in the kernel, and lib32 (cc -m32) support in userland. > > One question for this is if we think we will have sufficient developer > resources to maintain armv7 kernels for the life of stable/15. We can > largely punt on the final decision for that until close to the release of > 15.0. I think for what we announce for 14.0 we can still say that we > are generally planning to remove 32-bit kernel and world support in 15.0, > but may consider keeping armv7. I've posted a couple of reviews to add a WARNING to dmesg during the boot of 32-bit kernels as well as to add a note to RELNOTES to serve as the starting point for the note in the release notes: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D41163 https://reviews.freebsd.org/D41164 Also, Mike Karels has been working on lib32 support for aarch64 that should be included in 14.0. -- John Baldwin
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