Re: Mozilla Software on Sparc64/Linux

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Rick!

On 11/7/21 22:44, rl...@leirtech.com wrote:
> This thread below claims that Big-Endian is dead (2015). It says that IBM 
> changed
> their PowerPC's from BE to LE. Also that web developers assume LE.

Not sure how your comment is  related to the original question but let me just 
add this:

- IBM's s390x architecture is fully supported and one of IBM's cash cows and 
it's big-endian
- IBM's AIX operating system which IBM is still actively developing and selling 
is big-endian

> Adrian explained the problem in Firefox a while ago, it was complex.

Not really. Firefox on Solaris/SPARC exists and works. It's not complex, it's 
just that I am
doing the work here alone. I was planning to write an answer to this mail but I 
haven't gotten
around to doing that.

> The words of Linus:
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/4/24/606
> 
> Linux Plumbers Congress 2020:
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/829733/

Linus is not the center of the universe.

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

Re: Mozilla Software on Sparc64/Linux

[rleir]

Connor

This thread below claims that Big-Endian is dead (2015). It says that 
IBM changed their PowerPC's from BE to LE. Also that web developers 
assume LE.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451284

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16187939#:~:text=Big%20endian%20is%20dead%20on%20the%20client.&text=Big%20endian%20will%20stay%20alive,time%20on%20IBM%20z%20systems.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3467gq/bigendian_is_effectively_dead/

It ticks me off because I like BE better. And one of the most common 
architectures, ARM, is switchable between BE and LE. It is normally used 
as LE, but that is not stopping you.


Adrian explained the problem in Firefox a while ago, it was complex.

The words of Linus:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/4/24/606

Linux Plumbers Congress 2020:

https://lwn.net/Articles/829733/

Is it a lost cause? Rephrase that: how many of us want and need to 
scratch the itch?


cheers -- Rick

On 11/6/21 12:05 PM, Connor McLaughlan wrote:

Hello All,

i would be very interested in getting Firefox and Thunderbird (and 
possibly Seamonkey, but this isn't available at all with debian it 
seam) running, if possible at all for the newer versions.


I would be willing to file error reports and produce gdb output on 
crashes, if this would help and someone could direct me to information 
on how and where to do it for debian.
I have a few Sparc64 machines (Ultra45, Blade100, Ultra10, T1000, 
V120) to test.


What i can get running (but also with errors) are only to following 
two versions:

firefox_50.1.0-1_sparc64.deb
thunderbird_52.9.1-1_sparc64.deb

All later packages crash with bus errors.

But as the latest versions for Sparc64 are well behind the releases on 
the other architectures, would debian even accept bug reports for 
older packages? (eg. firefox-esr 78 x86_64 vs. firefox-esr 60 sparc64)


Rust seems not to be an issue any more for sparc64/linux, but the 
general upstream neglect of sparc64 seems to be the major problem.


I would like to hear opinions on how to proceed or if you think this 
is a lost cause?


Regards,
Connor