From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Tremer To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: Time is running out for 32-bit ARM Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2022 18:23:04 +0100 Message-ID: <4E33C747-A275-46D6-BC8E-250537BFE962@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: <5fa9edd9-07de-9d4f-044e-cc78b6bcf10b@ipfire.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1676933216324449433==" List-Id: --===============1676933216324449433== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, > On 14 Aug 2022, at 18:21, Peter M=C3=BCller wr= ote: >=20 > Hello Michael, >=20 > thanks for your mail. >=20 >> Hello everyone, >>=20 >> So since we had a good week of silence on this, I think it is time to come= to a decision. >>=20 >> I had a conversation with Arne today to check on the last few things I nee= ded to know and together (and based on opinions voiced by others and the fact= s) we have made the decision to retire support for armv6l by Feb 28 2023. >>=20 >> That date has been chosen as a compromise between shutting it down sooner = rather than later, and giving people enough time to migrate away. It is a lit= tle bit over 6 months which should be enough time to find some new hardware f= or the people affected. >=20 > Yes, that is a sane decision in my opinion as well. >=20 >>=20 >> There is now officially nobody in the group of developers who wants to kee= p this architecture alive, and I think it is the best way to give it another = six months. >>=20 >> I will submit a patch to show a warning and in early February will submit = a patch that removes any extra code or quirks that we have implemented for th= is architecture. >=20 > Thank you. >=20 > I will then update the relevant parts of the wiki to make clear that 32-bit= ARM is > discontinued, people should not buy new devices of this kind, etc. pp. Thank you. >=20 > Should we publish a short blog post on this? Or do you think (given the sma= ll user > base affected), mentioning the deprecation in the release notes of Core Upd= ate 171 > is enough? Yes. Would you like to draft one? We can talk about what we would like to say= in it. I don=E2=80=99t think just half a page of what we are doing is good e= nough. We should reflect slightly on how the journey was. > Thanks, and best regards, > Peter M=C3=BCller >=20 >>=20 >> Best, >> -Michael >>=20 >>> On 6 Aug 2022, at 16:31, Michael Tremer wro= te: >>>=20 >>> Hello, >>>=20 >>>> On 6 Aug 2022, at 13:40, Adolf Belka wrote: >>>>=20 >>>> Hi All, >>>>=20 >>>> Michael's suggested approach sounds fine to me. However, like Peter, I d= on't use any arm machines for IPFire so I don't have any impact personally. >>>>=20 >>>> Hopefully there will be some arm users that are on the dev mailing list = that will also provide input. >>>=20 >>> That would be great indeed. If not, I will also take that as answer. >>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>> Regards, >>>> Adolf. >>>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>> On 06/08/2022 14:24, Michael Tremer wrote: >>>>> Hello all, >>>>>=20 >>>>> Thank you for picking this up on the list. >>>>>=20 >>>>> I would like to make the following proposal: >>>>>=20 >>>>> * We discontinue building for armv6l on May 31st 2023 - in a little les= s than a year >>>>> * We keep hosting the packages for another three months and will remove= them from the servers after that >>>>>=20 >>>>> This is based on the following: >>>>>=20 >>>>> * As of today, have 0.98% of our user base on armv6l >>>>> * This used to be 1.69% on Jan 1st, 2021 and 1.67% on Jan 1st, 2022. >>>>>=20 >>>>> There is definitely a decline in the usage of that architecture and it = is of course incredibly small anyways. With all the extra work and workaround= s that we have in the code base here, the days and weeks that is going into i= t, this has surpassed the threshold where there is no growing or steady user = base any more. >>>>>=20 >>>>> Having said that, aarch64 (as of today) only has 1.29% of our users. No= t particularly a lot, but it has been steadily growing. Fingers crossed that = it will gain more momentum in the future. >>>>>=20 >>>>> Why would we not discontinue this now? I personally feel that I would l= ike to give people decent time to migrate away from this. Right now, we have = lots of supply issues, it is already mid-August, which would result in about = three months until EOL. Not that this would offend a large number of users, b= ut I don=E2=80=99t think that we should make life too much more complicated f= or anyone than it has to be. >>>>>=20 >>>>> We still have a running distribution that does not have any significant= problems on armv6l compared to the other architectures. It costs us build ti= mes - yes. It might cost us some extra development time - yes. But this is wh= at we have signed up for when we adopted this architecture. So we have to bea= r some responsibility. >>>>>=20 >>>>> -Michael >>>>>=20 >>>>>> On 2 Aug 2022, at 11:08, Peter M=C3=BCller wrote: >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> Hello *, >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> in January [1], we already discussed the situation of 32-bit ARM, and = settled on >>>>>> demoting this architecture as "legacy" on [2], and advising people fro= m buying new >>>>>> 32-bit ARM hardware in the wiki. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> To some extends, this architecture shares a similar fate than 32-bit I= ntel did: >>>>>> Security features are not backported to it, maintenance requires a lot= of effort >>>>>> due to missing upstream support, hardware base is diminishing, and its= IPFire >>>>>> userbase does not justify the resources required for keeping the distr= ibution >>>>>> reasonably maintained on this architecture. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> The other night, we have therefore agreed on putting an end to IPFire = support for >>>>>> 32-bit ARM, and take the question of the anticipated timeframe to this= mailing list. >>>>>> [3] >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> At the time of writing, Fireinfo reports 0.94% of all IPFire installat= ions to run >>>>>> on supported 32-bit ARM devices, to give you a figure. [4] >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> Personally, since these devices are unlikely to run in enterprises or = other critical >>>>>> environments, I would be fine with announcing EOL for 32-bit ARM at th= e end of >>>>>> this year. However, as I am not running any affected IPFire installati= ons, my >>>>>> opinion is biased - let's hear yours. :-) >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> Thanks in advance for your reply, and best regards, >>>>>> Peter M=C3=BCller >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> [1] https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/telco/2022-01-03 >>>>>> [2] https://www.ipfire.org/download >>>>>> [3] https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel/telco/2022-08-01 >>>>>> [4] https://fireinfo.ipfire.org/ >>>>=20 >>>> --=20 >>>> Sent from my laptop >>>>=20 >>>=20 >>=20 --===============1676933216324449433==--