Re: Please review blog post draft: powerpc64le-linux support

[Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>]

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Hi Léo,

Léo Le Bouter <lle-bout@zaclys.net> writes:

> It's been mostly you here Chris, thank you so much for writing it, as
> others said, it is really beautifully written! Unfortunately I havent
> felt enough peace of mind to write like you did :-(

You've been busy!  It's totally understandable.  The encouragement from
you and others has been very useful and motivating for me, so thank you.

> I would've liked to write about the early days where I met some
> problems with the core-updates branch having to rebase several times
> and learning GNU Guix at the same time since my first ever project
> related to GNU Guix was porting before even trying to use it elsewhere.
> Having to learn the GNU commit message guidelines, then learning git-
> send-email and GNU Emacs (since that's where all dev tools are), all
> that to contribute to GNU Guix and get this port in. Aaaahh very long
> story!

I agree.  Those are interesting topics.  I tried to include some
discussion about it, but the post became too lengthy.  I just want it to
be about the new support, mainly, and why it's exciting.

I think that the following related topics would make good candidates for
future blog posts:

- An analysis of trust in Guix, with an eye towards bootstrapping.  If
  you use substitutes, what are you implicitly trusting?  If you build
  without substitutes, what are you implicitly trusting?  If you build
  Guix from source without using Guix, like you have to do when you
  first port Guix to a new platform, what are you trusting?  A
  comparison of similar paths of trust when using other software.  Make
  a script to find out if there are any forgotten "bootstrap roots"
  beyond the bootstrap binaries, like there apparently used to be for
  some self-hosted compilers (see:
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/msg00814.html).
  Stuff like that.  I think it is not obvious.

- An analysis of the hurdles / friction involved in contributing.
  Preferably with suggestions for ways to remove the hurdles and reduce
  friction.  It is easy to complain or bikeshed, of course, but the
  point is not to do that.  The point is to discuss issues to try and
  make things better.

Thank you again for your help!  This is just the beginning - let's keep
hacking away at it and improving POWER9 support together!  Hopefully
others will see the benefits of the platform and join us along the way.

-- 
Chris

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