Re: MIPS support

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 08:32:00PM +0100, Christopher Baines wrote:
>> I was wondering about MIPS support, mainly because the Guix Data Service
>> uses QEMU to emulate different systems so that the channel instance
>> derivations can be computed (like [1]). I'm not sure if the emulation is
>> really necessary, but that's how it works at the moment.
>
> I'm not sure if the MIPS port ever resumed after being suspended:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-03/msg00790.html

In the intervening years, interest faded away as free software friendly
MIPS hardware became more rare.

Perhaps it would be more honest to officially remove the MIPS port now?

Technically that would involve removing it from the manual, from
configure.ac, and little more.

If there’s a need for it in the future, and developments happening for
MIPS in general (for the GNU tool chain, the kernel, etc.), then we can
always start a new MIPS port.  Until then, POWER9 and perhaps RISC-V
seem to have more appeal to free software hackers.

What do people think?

Ludo’.