Re: Future of 32-bit platforms (including i386)

John Baldwin <jhb_at_FreeBSD.org> wrote on
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 19:33:57 UTC :

> 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.

I see no wording about armv6 being removed earlier.

At one time Warner had written:

>> On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 11:48 AM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> FYI: The old 2021-Oct-28 message related to armv6 removal
>> sequencing/timing has a new follow up finally:
>> 
>> https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arch/2022-December/000313.html
>> 
>> (Nothing about this changes the armv7 status.)
> 
> Nope.
> 
> tl;dr: armv6 packages will stop, we'll stop doing -current armv6 snapshots, we'll move armv6 to
> an 'extra' architecture in universe for stable/14. post stable/14 we'll tear down support for armv6
> in base and later in ports. Ports mention armv6 ~500 times, maybe 1/4 of them also mention armv7,
> and the vast majority of them mark things as broken in some way (though there are exceptions).
> 
> Warner

===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com