On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 07:38:07PM +0100, Andreas Jochens wrote: > On 04-Dec-08 19:09, Sven Luther wrote: > > Well, the decision if we will go for a native 64 port, or a bi-arch solution > > has not yet been taken, so ... > > I am convinced that in the end there will be a native 64 bit port and > people will use that one. 32 bit binaries will be legacy and only > used in special cases like old closed source software. It will > certainly take some time but ultimately this will be the result. > So why not do it just now?
Because ppc was designed with 64bit in mind, and there is really not su huge an advantage of using pure 64bit software, and even a disadvantage in the code creep. Also, full ppc archive is right now around 16-18GB, for binaries only, the ppc64 will probably grow upto 20GB on top of that. Debian has no ppc64 autobuilders, and the ppc64 userbase is a real minority right now, and probably in the few years to come. > > on the glibc situation. The glibc situation is obviously blocked by the > > sarge > > release, so it is not time to go steaming ahead, but to consider our > > options, > > and see what is best. > > I fully agree. I have no intention to push anything forward before the > release of sarge. > > > My own plan is to get a biarch compiler, possibly even hacked somehow to be > > part of sarge, and then build a set of power3 and power4 ppc64 kernels, and > > maybe a statically linked pstools or whatever they are tools. More cannot be > > done for sarge. > > I hope that you will succeed with this plan. A ppc64 kernel in sarge > would of course make things _much_ easier for any 64 bit porting efforts > regardless of the decisions which have to be made. If I can help by > testing kernels or tools or otherwise please let me know. Exact. what hardware do you have anyway ? > > And have you thought what this would mean for mirror space ? The pure64 > > amd64 > > got already vetoed by the debian infrastucture admins, since it would kill > > our > > mirroring network, so ... > > Is 5 GB extra mirrorspace for a new port really so critical today? 5GB ? You are being extremely optimist on this one, i think. I would say more like 15-20, for the full archive (stable, testing, unstable, experimental). Also the problem is not mirrorspace, but replication bandwidth. Friendly, Sven Luther
