From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: RFC: Portability should be a higher priority for Guix (was Re: 01/01: build-system/meson: Really skip the 'fix-runpath' phase on armhf.) Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2018 11:01:19 +0200 Message-ID: <87d0w2f44g.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20180702101757.22792.51026@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> <20180702101758.97A6020543@vcs0.savannah.gnu.org> <8736x1r1g0.fsf@netris.org> <877emdwm0f.fsf@fastmail.com> <87efgknn2v.fsf@netris.org> <87in5veaao.fsf@gnu.org> <871scin5bs.fsf_-_@netris.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:40472) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fb08j-00074F-NC for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Jul 2018 05:01:29 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fb08g-0005xv-MD for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 05 Jul 2018 05:01:25 -0400 In-Reply-To: <871scin5bs.fsf_-_@netris.org> (Mark H. Weaver's message of "Wed, 04 Jul 2018 15:55:51 -0400") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Mark H Weaver Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi again Mark, Mark H Weaver skribis: > ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Court=C3=A8s) writes: > >> Mark H Weaver skribis: >> >>> The end result is that the wishes of the x86_64-using majority are the >>> only ones that seem to matter in this community, and other users are >>> frequently left in a bad spot. This makes it increasingly unlikely that >>> we'll ever gain a significant number of non-x86_64 users. >> >> This kind of rant is really unhelpful. You=E2=80=99re shouting at someo= ne who >> *is* doing the work of keeping things running. > > I wasn't actually shouting, but in retrospect I can see how it came off > that way. I apologize for any hurt feelings that I caused. I think the error is to suggest that people genuinely don=E2=80=99t care ab= out the issues. Often they=E2=80=99re unaware, and sometimes they make suboptimal tradeoffs= , as in the PatchELF case, simply because the status quo is worse than the suboptimal tradeoff. > However, I do feel frustrated by the fact that it's considered > acceptable in this community to leave non-x86_64 users with broken > systems in the name of "moving things forward" for x86_64 users. Like I write, it=E2=80=99s not =E2=80=9Cconsidered acceptable.=E2=80=9D Th= at=E2=80=99s just not the way it works. There=E2=80=99s an implicit rule that we should not break any architecture badly, but just like sometimes packages fail to build, sometimes there are architecture-specific issues; and just like an unpopular package that fails to build is likely to remain that way, an unpopular architecture is more likely to have issues. We don=E2=80=99t have to take it as a fact of life, though. We can work proactively to mitigate that, and support for those architectures in the build farm, along with heads-up from overseers (like you=E2=80=99ve been do= ing to great effect!) can greatly help. It won=E2=80=99t bring, say, MIPS to t= he level of support of x86_64, but it can reduce damage. > I'm open to suggestions. Do you see any solution to the problem of how > to attract more non-x86_64 users, given our current policies? Efraim, Danny, Vagrant, Julien, Mathieu, etc. have done a lot of work fiddling with ARMv7 and AArch64. We should encourage that, and providing timely substitutes for the arches is one way to do it, and ultimately to attract more users and contributors. Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.