Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Graham Christensen]

At this point I think we should not make any changes in how we support i686.

Graham

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 7:37 AM Graham Christensen 
wrote:

>
> As far as I know, Nix has no way to gather statistics on how many people
> are using different architectures. This makes questions like this a bit
> awkward.
>
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?
>
> Graham
>
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Tilo Schwarz]

Please don't drop it yet :-)

% uname -a
Linux schleppa 4.4.40 #1-NixOS SMP Fri Jan 6 10:16:31 UTC 2017 i686
GNU/Linux

Thank you,
Tilo

-- 

Best regards / Viele Grüße,

Tilo Schwarz
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Yarny]

Am 26.01.2017 um 14:37 schrieb graham at grahamc.com (Graham Christensen):
> anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?

Hi, we're currently moving from openSUSE to NixOS.
More than half of the machines I'm administering
are i686 architecture, and 32 bit support
is is one of many reasons for switching.
We're still preparing -- we need to port
some SUSE-specific scripts to NixOS.

However, I'm more of a regular user,
not a NixOS developer (also not a list member),
so I'm not sure how much my vote counts.

Best wishes! -- Yarny
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Maarten Hoogendoorn]

2017-01-27 14:13 GMT+01:00 Eelco Dolstra :

>
> I think it's more an issue of build time, especially if we want Hydra to
> build
> PRs (which could trigger a full rebuild in the worst case).
>
>
I think we could/should use a GitHub bot like the @bors used by the Rust
language project.
This will prevent building PR's until a code review is done by a
contributor, who then will instruct the build bot to build the PR via a
GitHub comment. If the tests pass on Hydra, the PR will be merged
automatically into master.
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Vladimír Čunát]

On 01/27/2017 02:13 PM, Eelco Dolstra wrote:
> Another possibility is to reduce the number of packages that get built for 
> i686,
> but it would be tricky to decide which packages to keep.

I had thought of building i686 packages "less often", but I couldn't see
an easy way to do that, except separating into another "slower" jobset.
That would also mean the complication of having separate i686 channels,
if we wanted to do this properly, etc.

> For some applications, i686 binaries require less memory and are
> slightly faster.

I still use i686 Firefox to lower its memory usage on my older laptop.
Those couple hundred MBs do make a difference there.  x32ABI should take
the better of both there, but it would be just another platform to build
and with much less general support than those that we have now.

--Vladimir




smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Marco Maggesi]

I use nixos i686 on virtualbox, xen and on some old hardware.
For some applications, i686 binaries require less memory and are
slightly faster.
From my personal use, the dismiss of support of i686 would be a loss.
Marco

2017-01-26 16:46 GMT+01:00 Ryan Trinkle :
> I provide i686 binaries for users of reflex-platform, a nix-based
> environment for developing GUI applications in Haskell.  I have only a few
> confirmed users of i686, but since their machines are correspondingly older
> and less powerful than most of my other users', the benefit of nix's binary
> caching is especially pronounced.  Building the reflex-platform ecosystem
> from scratch takes about 6 hours on a fast, modern machine, so outdated
> machines (especially if they are RAM-limited, as most 32-bit systems are)
> is, nearly unworkable.
>
> On the other hand, I don't know anything about the cost of supporting i686,
> so if cutting it makes sense to others and enables nixpkgs as a whole to
> move faster, I certainly won't complain.
>
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Profpatsch  wrote:
>>
>> On 17-01-26 08:37am, Graham Christensen wrote:
>> > One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
>> > anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
>> > using NixOS on i686?
>>
>> I’m using it for one old machine running the audio server
>> of our hackerspace.
>>
>> --
>> Proudly written in Mutt with Vim on NixOS.
>> Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
>> A: http://five.sentenc.es
>> May take up to five days to read your message. If it’s urgent, call me.
>> ___
>> nix-dev mailing list
>> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
>
>
> ___
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Lukas Epple]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 08:37:06AM -0500, Graham Christensen wrote:
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?

I use a IBM ThinkPad T43 with NixOS.
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Graham Christensen]

Vladimír Čunát  writes:

> When creating a new stable, I think the month between branch-off and
> release should be enough to fix any important i686-specific issues, as
> they tend to be relatively rare.

However then, in the worst case, we're left to git-bisect 6 months of
changes until we can find the offending issue.

Hydra can rebuild the whole nixpkgs set very quickly if we want to and I
don't get the impression anyone is concerned about binary cache size.

Graham
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Vladimír Čunát]

I think the main resource cost for us is the build farm and binary
cache.  Idea: what about building full i686-linux set only on stable
branches?

Note: obviously, callPackage_i686 will still use i686 even if "evaluated
for x86_64", which is what we want for wine, skype, etc.

When creating a new stable, I think the month between branch-off and
release should be enough to fix any important i686-specific issues, as
they tend to be relatively rare.

--Vladimir




smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Ertugrul Söylemez]

> As far as I know, Nix has no way to gather statistics on how many people
> are using different architectures. This makes questions like this a bit
> awkward.
>
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?

Arch has a different philosophy, so it makes sense for them to drop
legacy support sooner than other distributions.  It's also important to
consider that they actually have to manage two sets of packages, so
their maintenance cost may be a lot higher, while in Nixpkgs we can get
away with a single expression for both (and more) architectures most of
the time.


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Ryan Trinkle]

I provide i686 binaries for users of reflex-platform, a nix-based
environment for developing GUI applications in Haskell.  I have only a few
confirmed users of i686, but since their machines are correspondingly older
and less powerful than most of my other users', the benefit of nix's binary
caching is especially pronounced.  Building the reflex-platform ecosystem
from scratch takes about 6 hours on a fast, modern machine, so outdated
machines (especially if they are RAM-limited, as most 32-bit systems are)
is, nearly unworkable.

On the other hand, I don't know anything about the cost of supporting i686,
so if cutting it makes sense to others and enables nixpkgs as a whole to
move faster, I certainly won't complain.

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 10:31 AM, Profpatsch  wrote:

> On 17-01-26 08:37am, Graham Christensen wrote:
> > One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> > anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> > using NixOS on i686?
>
> I’m using it for one old machine running the audio server
> of our hackerspace.
>
> --
> Proudly written in Mutt with Vim on NixOS.
> Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
> A: http://five.sentenc.es
> May take up to five days to read your message. If it’s urgent, call me.
> ___
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Profpatsch]

On 17-01-26 08:37am, Graham Christensen wrote:
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?

I’m using it for one old machine running the audio server
of our hackerspace.

-- 
Proudly written in Mutt with Vim on NixOS.
Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
A: http://five.sentenc.es
May take up to five days to read your message. If it’s urgent, call me.
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Nathan Bijnens]

It would be a pity if we didn't support i686 anymore.

I use NixOS on a NAS, which only supports i686.

This question has been asked before (about 6 months ago).

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017, 15:02 Benno Fünfstück 
wrote:

> There's still a few packages in nixpkgs that require i686, like Skype,
> even on x86_64.
>
> Benno
>
> Graham Christensen  schrieb am Do., 26. Jan. 2017,
> 14:37:
>
>
> As far as I know, Nix has no way to gather statistics on how many people
> are using different architectures. This makes questions like this a bit
> awkward.
>
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?
>
> Graham
> ___
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
> ___
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Benno Fünfstück]

There's still a few packages in nixpkgs that require i686, like Skype, even
on x86_64.

Benno

Graham Christensen  schrieb am Do., 26. Jan. 2017,
14:37:

>
> As far as I know, Nix has no way to gather statistics on how many people
> are using different architectures. This makes questions like this a bit
> awkward.
>
> One person on IRC said they think they may have used it once. Does
> anyone on this list use NixOS on i686? anyone on this list know anyone
> using NixOS on i686?
>
> Graham
> ___
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Re: [Nix-dev] Arch is dropping i686. Should we?

[Robert Helgesson]

> Does anyone on this list use NixOS on i686?

Besides some VirtualBox image laying around I have one physical machine:

  $ uname -a
  Linux kappa 4.4.31 #1-NixOS SMP Thu Nov 10 15:37:00 UTC 2016 i686
GNU/Linux
  $ grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo
  model name: Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU - M  1200MHz

It is the IBM ThinkPad X30 mentioned in
  https://rycee.net/posts/2016-11-13-an-atypical-nixos-install.html

/rycee

___
nix-dev mailing list
nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev