• [Sbcl-devel] Alpha, HPPA support at risk

    From John Paul Adrian Glaubitz@21:1/5 to Christophe Rhodes on Thu Mar 12 22:30:02 2020
    XPost: linux.debian.ports.hppa

    Hi Christophe

    On 3/12/20 10:15 PM, Christophe Rhodes wrote:
    I would like the SBCL project to try to substantially improve, or else retire, support for Alpha and HPPA.

    At the moment, those backends in particular are kept in the source more
    for nostalgia than any other reason; and there's a problem with that,
    because the nostalgia gets in the way of improving other things, because
    of the hoops that developers need to go through to keep those backends compiling.

    Moreover, just because we have tried to keep the backends compiling
    gives no guarantee that they actually run; I'd be slightly surprised if
    they don't crash pretty quickly in cold-init.

    I sent in some fixes, but so far I haven't been able to get SBCL to run
    on Alpha or HPPA, both crash in cold-init. But that's also the case
    for MIPS when I tested.

    Generally, I try to help whereever I can but I'm by no means a Lisp
    expert. There are Alpha and HPPA porters around in Debian and Gentoo
    which might be interested to help.

    So, I think that the time has come to ask whether anyone needs those backends. You might! And if you do, we badly need your help to get the backend properly working and tested on a regular basis (ideally daily;
    weekly at a pinch).

    There are Alpha and HPPA machines available from Debian (and Gentoo?)
    but you can also install current versions Debian for Alpha and HPPA
    inside qemu-system without any problems.

    My expectation, though, is that no-one needs these backends enough to
    commit enough cycles (of hardware and wetware) to sustain them for the
    long term, and if no-one comes forward I expect to delete them from the sources after the June release of SBCL. (If someone steps up after that point, I would be happy to undelete a backend, again with the proviso
    that there should be available hardware to test and human effort to keep working.)

    I hope that this isn't a shock to anyone! By all means follow up if it
    is.

    If you want feedback from Alpha and HPPA people, it's best to ask on the appropriate mailing lists in Debian (and Gentoo FWIW). There aren't probably any Alpha or HPPA people around here.

    I'll add debian-alpha and debian-hppa and notify the Gentoo folks on IRC.

    Adrian

    --
    .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
    : :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
    `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
    `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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  • From John Paul Adrian Glaubitz@21:1/5 to John Paul Adrian Glaubitz on Sun Mar 15 18:40:02 2020
    XPost: linux.debian.ports.hppa

    On 3/12/20 10:23 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
    Moreover, just because we have tried to keep the backends compiling
    gives no guarantee that they actually run; I'd be slightly surprised if
    they don't crash pretty quickly in cold-init.

    I sent in some fixes, but so far I haven't been able to get SBCL to run
    on Alpha or HPPA, both crash in cold-init. But that's also the case
    for MIPS when I tested.

    Generally, I try to help whereever I can but I'm by no means a Lisp
    expert. There are Alpha and HPPA porters around in Debian and Gentoo
    which might be interested to help.
    I'm working on getting SBCL buildable on Debian using CLISP. Then we get
    a CI for all architectures for free which does not depend on a working
    SBCL compiler being available on the FTP servers.

    Adrian

    --
    .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
    : :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
    `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
    `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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