Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 21:26:16 +0000 From: "Brandstaetter, Klaus" <kb@hob.de> To: 'Marcel Moolenaar' <marcel@xcllnt.net>, "ia64@freebsd.org" <ia64@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: [ia64] End of life... Message-ID: <E301C27520DD0D4F886945897F66A9EE28C20097@HOBEX21.hob.de> In-Reply-To: <8DB8FBB4-A167-4C20-BC28-583247202EF4@xcllnt.net> References: <8DB8FBB4-A167-4C20-BC28-583247202EF4@xcllnt.net>
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Hallo my name is Klaus Brandst=E4tter, and I'm the CEO of HOB, a medium-sized German software company. We have a number of projects based on FreeBSD - x86 and IPF. -----Original Message----- From: owner-freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org= ] On Behalf Of Marcel Moolenaar Sent: Donnerstag, 15. Mai 2014 22:12 To: ia64@freebsd.org Subject: [ia64] End of life... Executive summary: Support for ia64 will be removed from FreeBSD-current in the near future wh= ich means that FreeBSD-10 is the last release of FreeBSD that supports ia64= . All, With the FreeBSD project committed to replace GCC with LLVM/clang on the on= e hand and GDB with LLDB on the other, development tools that are fundament= al in supporting ia64 will disappear. While support for ia64 in FreeBSD could be extended by depending on external developer tools = to build and develop ia64, it's clear that the gap between CPU architecture= s natively supported by FreeBSD and ia64 is widening to a point where it's = extremely unlikely that ia64 will ever be a fully supported architecture. The limited amount of active development that ia64 needed to not rot away h= as made it possible for ia64 to remain for as long as it did. This is to the credit of FreeBSD's architecture and cleanliness. But the am= ount of time that I personally could spent on ia64 has always been on the l= ow end and because of this many core bugs took a very long time to fix and = some are still not fixed to date. Me taking a slight detour to port FreeBSD= to SGI's Altix 350 & 450 did not help on that front although I found it ve= ry educational. Truth be told -- the learning curve and the enjoyment of working on ia64 has sloped off for me and the amount of hard work that the CPU archite= cture demands is only increasing. It's time for me to stop trying and think= of other things to spent my free time on. Not that I have to think long or= hard -- or at all for that matter ;-) Not only do I not have any free time= , I already have plenty of things I can do. So, my last task is to round things up, turn the lights off and close the d= oor behind me. For those still running FreeBSD/ia64: thank you! -- Marcel Moolenaar marcel@xcllnt.net ________________________________ Follow HOB: - HOB: http://www.hob.de/redirect/hob.html - Xing: http://www.hob.de/redirect/xing.html - LinkedIn: http://www.hob.de/redirect/linkedin.html - HOBLink Mobile: http://www.hob.de/redirect/hoblinkmobile.html - Facebook: http://www.hob.de/redirect/facebook.html - Twitter: http://www.hob.de/redirect/twitter.html - YouTube: http://www.hob.de/redirect/youtube.html - E-Mail: http://www.hob.de/redirect/mail.html HOB RD VPN - einfach, sicher und flexibel auf alle Unternehmensanwendungen = und -daten zugreifen Praesentation unter: http://www.hob.de/rdvpn2/ HOB GmbH & Co. KG Schwadermuehlstr. 3 D-90556 Cadolzburg Geschaeftsfuehrung: Klaus Brandstaetter, Zoran Adamovic AG Fuerth, HRA 5180 Steuer-Nr. 218/163/00107 USt-ID-Nr. DE 132747002 Komplementaerin HOB electronic Beteiligungs GmbH AG Fuerth, HRB 3416
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