On Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 05:11:02PM +0300, Adrian Bunk wrote:

Fact is that the s390x port is different from all other ports in Debian.
And it is causing extra work to support such a port.
Which is an even bigger problem when there are no porters doing this work.

OK - I see that there is no chance to save this arch in Release. It
seems that decision has been made. I'm wondering why the architecture
had been ported in previous releases and who did it. Why to start
porting if it is unnecessery for anyone.

Two porters are the minimum requirement for release architectures.

Just yesterday there was a question from a Debian maintainer sent to the
s390 list about an s390x-only problem in a package[1]:

Any of you have any idea why the threads on s390x behave differently
than all the other architectures?

I do not know whether there is anything special about threading on s390x compared to other Linux architectures, but porters are expected to know.

If there is a problem like for example kernel crashes with the Debian
kernel on a Debian machine like a buildd for a release architecture,
someone has to debug the problem swiftly.

Debian does not have a service agreement with IBM for maintaining the
Debian kernel on s390x, it is the duty of the s390x porters to maintain
the Debian kernel and debug problems in the Debian kernel.

Is any porter available for that platform? Based on your previous
messages I assume that no - the last release was done by automata (it
explain also why installation media lacks of some packages and
installation process fails). Sorry to are real porters if they exits for previous sentence.
Yes I saw this question - for me personally, the problem is that I don't
know all aspects of porting, I cannot even try to answer, because I
don't know where and how to check described bug. Yes I know, today
creating software like Debian (and other) means to be tribe in the
machine. Probably I have to spend long time to understand all
dependencies, systems, access right to be a bit like porter.

Debian is a volunteer project.
s390x is a business-to-business affair.

Other ports have a community of people who have a Raspberry Pi or
an old hppa workstation at home.

Nonne has an old mainframe at home for keeping Debian running on it
as a hobby.

That is not true - you just don't know such persons :-)

How many companies are buying a mainframe without any software support contracts with IBM or other companies?

With that kind of financial investment you usually want a Linux
distribution that is supported by IBM, and buy support for that
distribution from the company behind the distribution.

Yes definitly - if make businnes you have to pay. No other rules.

...

IMHO it would be best if s390x would become a non-release architecture
in ports.

A Debian port disappears when there are not enough porters with the
necessary skills keeping it working.

For non-release architectures one dedicated person is enough.

So how to help?

(and some people abandon it or switch to Ubuntu
...

What people are you talking about?

Philipp made a good point that the Debian s390x port might already have
no users at all left.

Hmm - so I'm dead, nor exist. And in minimum one other who I know
directly.

Anyway - once again - thanks for everyone who spend time (and money) for Debian.

Piotr

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