Re: Fwd: FreeBSD 14: Poll armv6 deprecated or removed

On Thu, 28 Oct 2021 09:44:20 -0600
Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> Greetings armv6 users
> 
> Please see the following thread on freebsd-arch@ about the future of armv6
> support in FreeBSD 14.
> 
> Warner
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
> Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 9:37 AM
> Subject: FreeBSD 14: Poll armv6 deprecated or removed
> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Given that the number of available and useful armv6 boards has fallen to
> almost zero, the time has come to look hard at armv6.
> 
> There's a number of options.
> 
> 1. Keep it as is. This will only happen if there's a lot more users than we
> think (and we think there's nearly zero users of FreeBSD 13 and newer that
> would want to run FreeBSD 14).
> 
> 2. Stop building packages. Given it's small to non-existent user base, it
> makes no sense to provide a package building service for it.
> 2a. We should likely do this anyway for all stable branches since it's a
> net negative in terms of cost/benefit analysis: lots of effort to produce,
> very little use.
> 
> 3. Disconnect it from universe: This will mean it will rot, though. It's a
> necessary step in removal.
> 
> 4. Remove support for armv6 in base entirely. This will orphan any RPiB and
> RPi0 users out there. However, the RPiB hasn't been sold in a few years,
> and the RPI0's connectivity is severely lacking given no SDIO support.
> 
> So, which of these steps do we do before FreeBSD 14 and which before
> FreeBSD 15?
> 
> My vote would be to do 1-4 for 14 including 2a.
> 
> Warner

 For 1. it's impossible to know the numbers of users currently but
based on what it is possible to do on RPI-B/RPI0 right now (i.e. not
much except some conserver thingy or things like that) I don't think
that even if there is a lot of users that should count. It's not like
there is some products using RPI-B and FreeBSD.

 For 2. If we stop building packages we should stop building images as
a user that download an image from the FreeBSD website expect to have
packages available. So if we do both the arch will rot even more
quickly than currently.

 For 3. Same thing, the arch will rot.

 For 4. I'm not the right person to ask but I don't plan to do any
armv6 work (not that I ever did ...) and I also don't plan to make some
optimization of armv7 if armv6 is removed but if that makes it easier
for others my vote is on removing the arch given it's mostly useless
nowadays.

-- 
Emmanuel Vadot <manu@bidouilliste.com> <manu@freebsd.org>