Our mips64el support is really really dead

[Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1418 bytes --]

Three initial bits about Guix's support for mips64el:
1. We stopped producing a standalone installer for mips64el before the
1.0 release, which means it's been years since anyone has been able to
install it without help. Actually, 0.12 was the last version¹, back in
2016.
2. We supported the Lemote Fuloong 2F²/Loongson 2 (MIPS III) processors.
Except for very specific sticks of RAM, it only supported 1GB of RAM. As
for the processor, I believe most other distributions moved to the
Loongson 3 as their base. Debian³ 9 (in 2017) it seems switched to
Loongson 3A/3B based machines for their Loongson support.
3. "Generic" --target=mips64el-linux-gnu support from the GNU toolchain
doesn't support Loongson 2 chips, it needs some extra flags. I tested
this a few years ago and wasn't able to run a cross-compiled package on
one of our decommissioned mips64el build machines (citation needed).

I suggest that we stop cross-compiling packages to mips64el since it is
really dead-dead, and not just mostly-dead or nearly-dead.

¹ https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/guix/
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Loongson_microprocessor_specifications
³ https://www.debian.org/ports/mips/

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]