Help wanted improving Rust support for RISC-V

From: Alan Somers <asomers_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:47:21 UTC
I want to improve the state of Rust on FreeBSD in general, and RISC-V
in particular.  My plan is:

* Assemble a corpus of crates heavy on OS stuff (like Nix and Tokio)
and ensure that their tests pass on Riscv FreeBSD.
* Update libc's ABI to FreeBSD 12, finally eliminating the need for
COMPAT_11 on riscv to run Rust programs.
* Ensure that the corpus of crates still passes their tests.
* Convince the libc maintainers to use the FreeBSD 12 ABI, for riscv only.
* After a full Rust release cycle (at least 6 weeks), and maybe two,
if there are no reports of breakage, and if Poudriere looks good, use
that as justification to raise libc's ABI for all architectures.

But in order to do any of this, I need access to riscv hardware.  A
virtual instance at Scaleway[^1][^2] would be ideal, but I don't know
if FreeBSD can run there.  Has anybody tried it?  Failing that, I
would need to either acquire some hardware myself, or borrow access to
somebody else's.  Or, convince some other developer to do the work
himself.  But I won't be able to help very much if I don't have direct
access.

Can anybody on this list help me get some access?

-Alan

[^1]: https://labs.scaleway.com/en/em-rv1/
[^2]: https://www.phoronix.com/review/scaleway-risc-v-cloud