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Date:      Wed, 4 Nov 2015 16:19:38 -0700
From:      Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To:        sbruno@freebsd.org
Cc:        freebsd-arch <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>, Marius Strobl <marius@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Sparc64 doesn't care about you, and you shouldn't care about Sparc64
Message-ID:  <2AAC0EF3-528B-476F-BA9C-CDC3004465D0@bsdimp.com>
In-Reply-To: <563A5893.1030607@freebsd.org>
References:  <563A5893.1030607@freebsd.org>

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> On Nov 4, 2015, at 12:12 PM, Sean Bruno <sbruno@freebsd.org> wrote:
>=20
> So here's the thing, Sparc64 is *just* barely alive in FreeBSD.

Has anybody actually booted it off a newish tree?

> There is exactly 1 Sparc64 machine as a ref box being hosted at Yahoo
> for the project.  No new hardware is on the horizon.  None of the =
newer
> Sparc64 processors have been tested to work on FreeBSD and nobody is
> clamoring to get them working.
>=20
> We're moving into a post-gcc base system now, and sparc64 is the =
obvious
> "odd arch" here.  There's activity to get MIPS moved to clang and =
active
> work to get powerpc moved fully to clang.  Leaving Sparc64 in base,
> requires someone to either make clang DTRT or keep gcc 4.2.1-ish =
alive.

There was some work to get clang to do the right thing for sparc64. Last
I heard, the tree compiles with it. It didn=E2=80=99t boot, but at the =
time gcc-compiled
kernels didn=E2=80=99t boot either. I=E2=80=99m not sure how this status =
has moved through time.
It would be best to ask Marius Strobl, since he=E2=80=99s the only one =
committing
to sparc64 sub-tree lately non-global-sweep cleanups.

Here=E2=80=99s a breakdown of commits in different parts of sys. The =
=E2=80=98Marius=E2=80=99 column
is for commits Marius has made in sparc64 only. The rest are the =
different
architectures we currently support. I wrote this with mail.app, so =
formatting
may be dicy.

Year		Marius	sparc64	mips	arm		powerpc	i386		=
amd64	x86	arm64
2015	5		32		164		445		=
144		168		247		109	168
2014	0		39		117		672		=
98		125		296		108	-
2013	14		65		235		455		=
217		142		235		67	-
2012	24		55		272		343		=
152		188		221		76	-
2011	78		131		205		105		=
172		189		182		56	-
2010	75		127		501		103		=
211		274		268		75	-
2009 	58		95		269		193		=
137		293		258		-	-
2008	65		109		65		167		=
161		304		222		-	-

sparc64 rate of change has fallen way off since 2011, both in terms of =
the
number of commits, as well as the share of commits relative to other
platforms. While I know that not all commits are treated equally, and =
that
different commit styles in different parts of the tree may skew things,

> I have asked around for help getting the Sparc64 qemu-bsd-user binary
> working so I could at a minimum build packages, and I have gotten no
> feedback from folks.  So the only option here is to resurrect sparc64
> machines somewhere and start up builds on real hardware.
>=20
> Let's just call it what it is, a dead end of the technology tree.
> I move that we do NOT produce 11.0 versions for Sparc64 and it should =
be
> dropped from the tree.

I concur.  I think sparc64 has had a nice run, but it=E2=80=99s time to =
recognize
that the run is nearing its end.

Warner


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