Re: Hello from powerpc

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Carlos!

address@hidden (Carlos Sánchez de La Lama) skribis:

> success, finally:
>
> $ ./pre-inst-env guix build hello
> [...]
> /gnu/store/ynpd0qpppl0fdh252wns87d158pbdx8q-hello-2.10
>
> $ /gnu/store/ynpd0qpppl0fdh252wns87d158pbdx8q-hello-2.10/bin/hello
> Hello, world!
>
> $ uname -a
> Linux bilbo 3.16.0-4-powerpc #1 Debian 3.16.36-1+deb8u1 (2016-09-03) ppc
> GNU/Linux

Woohoo!  Congrats!  \o/

> I am unsure on the best way to integrate my changes upstream. I have to
> review some of the patches I sent those last weeks, some of which
> required minor changes to be accepted, and send some new ones to the
> list.

Sure.  Just ask if in doubt.

There’s the question of what to do with that architecture from a
maintenance viewpoint.

Ideally we’d provide binaries for that architecture, but for that we’d
need at the very least two build machines.  Do you have an idea as how
we could get donations for that?  Perhaps we could discuss it with the
Talos folks, they may be interested in having more free software
developers working on PPC.

Also we’ll need actual users and developers so we can sustain
maintenance of that platform—fix packages that break, help out when a
major toolchain upgrade doesn’t work as smoothly as it should, etc.  For
that we’ll mostly need to promote the port in PowerPC circles, I
suppose.

If we fail to do that, I think we’ll can still have the patches in but
prominently mark the platform as “unofficially supported” or something
along these lines (like Debian does).  If after a couple of years the
situation hasn’t improved, we might want to discuss whether to drop it.

WDYT?

> For starters, one question: I *know* the exact bootstrap binaries I have
> used now work (because I relaunched the bootstrap from scratch on
> friday). However, if I regenerate them they are going to be slightly
> different (because I made a change to gcc after generating them, and
> static gcc inherits it). Do you guys think is better to accept the
> proven bootstrap binaries as the "good" ones, keep current hashes and
> publish the tarballs, or merge everything first and then generate new
> bootstrap binaries, updating the hashes?

Does cross-compilation to powerpc-linux-gnu work in current master?
If/when it does, we can ask Hydra to cross-build a few things, like we
already do for other targets:

  
https://hydra.gnu.org/job/gnu/master/mips64el-linux-gnuabi64.bootstrap-tarballs-0.x86_64-linux
  
https://hydra.gnu.org/job/gnu/master/arm-linux-gnueabihf.bootstrap-tarballs-0.x86_64-linux

That way we can maybe reuse the latest binaries without yourself having
to rebuild them by hand, and it will provide a clearer audit trail.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.