Dear all,

The mips architecture, supporting 32-bit big-endian MIPS CPUs, has
been supported in Debian for more than 15 years. Due to the limited 2GB
virtual address space and due to the fact this architecture is one of
the last big-endian architecture Debian supports, the porting effort
is increasingly difficult. On the other hand the interest for this
architecture is going down, and with it the human resources available
for porting is going down.

Now that buster has been released, it is probably time to drop this architecture from bullseye and sid. Unless there is a sudden interest
for this architecture, that is commitment from some new porters and new hardware for the build daemons, the plan is to ask for the ftpmasters
to drop this architecture in about 4 weeks. Note that many recent
MIPS hardware support endian switching at runtime and can therefore be supported by the mipsel or mips64el ports. This is the case for example
of the Octeon CPUs.

Note that this *only concerns bullseye and sid*. The mips architecture
will still be available for stretch for roughly 1 more year, and for
buster for roughly 3 more years.

Aurelien, on behalf of the MIPS porters

--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B aurelien@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet

Salut Aurélien !

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 12:47 PM Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org> wrote:

Dear all,

The mips architecture, supporting 32-bit big-endian MIPS CPUs, has
been supported in Debian for more than 15 years. Due to the limited 2GB virtual address space and due to the fact this architecture is one of
the last big-endian architecture Debian supports, the porting effort
is increasingly difficult. On the other hand the interest for this architecture is going down, and with it the human resources available
for porting is going down.

Thanks for your dedication these last years.

Now that buster has been released, it is probably time to drop this architecture from bullseye and sid. Unless there is a sudden interest
for this architecture, that is commitment from some new porters and new hardware for the build daemons, the plan is to ask for the ftpmasters
to drop this architecture in about 4 weeks.

In other words, mips is not going to debian-ports ?

Note that many recent
MIPS hardware support endian switching at runtime and can therefore be supported by the mipsel or mips64el ports. This is the case for example
of the Octeon CPUs.

Note that this *only concerns bullseye and sid*. The mips architecture
will still be available for stretch for roughly 1 more year, and for
buster for roughly 3 more years.

Aurelien, on behalf of the MIPS porters

--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B aurelien@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net

--
Mathieu

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Salut,

On 2019-07-22 10:24, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:

Salut Aurélien !

On Sat, Jul 20, 2019 at 12:47 PM Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org> wrote:

Dear all,

The mips architecture, supporting 32-bit big-endian MIPS CPUs, has
been supported in Debian for more than 15 years. Due to the limited 2GB virtual address space and due to the fact this architecture is one of
the last big-endian architecture Debian supports, the porting effort
is increasingly difficult. On the other hand the interest for this architecture is going down, and with it the human resources available
for porting is going down.

Thanks for your dedication these last years.

Now that buster has been released, it is probably time to drop this architecture from bullseye and sid. Unless there is a sudden interest
for this architecture, that is commitment from some new porters and new hardware for the build daemons, the plan is to ask for the ftpmasters
to drop this architecture in about 4 weeks.

In other words, mips is not going to debian-ports ?

If there are nobody taking care of the port, nor hardware for the build daemons, the port will become unusable in a few months or even in a few
weeks given the rate of changes currently happening in sid. I therefore
do not see the point of moving it to debian-ports.

Aurelien

--
Aurelien Jarno GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B aurelien@aurel32.net http://www.aurel32.net

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)