arm64 as Tier 1 for FreeBSD 13

[Paul Mather]

On Dec 4, 2019, at 4:24 AM, Robert Clausecker <fuz at fuz.su> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 07:29:57AM +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> In message <CAPyFy2BXWPVOJo+GOf83sZFrPHE80-QvdHeWrhi+Tdj0KDnThg at mail.gmail.com>, Ed Maste writes:
>>> We don't do this today, but have the ability to do so for arm64 server
>>> platforms. (Due to its design, freebsd-update does not work
>>> particularly well on devices with slow root filesystems such as SD
>>> cards.)
>> 
>> I don't think storage-technology should be used as a discriminant here.
>> 
>> First because it is quite trivial to plug in a quality USB SSD (WD
>> passport for instance) and use that as root filesystem.
>> 
>> Second, just because freebsd-update takes a day to run, doesn't mean
>> that people would not want it.
> 
> Indeed.  For example, on a Raspberry Pi 3B, it takes multiple days to
> build world as the build must be done single threaded due to a lack of
> RAM (building LLVM is the worst offender here).  Getting it down to one
> day is already a huge quality of life improvement.


I'm running FreeBSD/arm64 12-STABLE on a Raspberry Pi 3 using a root-on-ZFS setup.  I've been using packaged base for quite some time, cross-building on FreeBSD/amd64.  Every time I upgrade FreeBSD via "pkg upgrade" it seems to me that it does not take an inordinately long time.  It takes longer than packaged base on a regular FreeBSD/amd64 server with spinning disk, but not an excessive amount of time.  It's certainly on the order of minutes, not hours.

Cheers,

Paul.