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: Sat, 06 Aug 2022 16:31:38 +0100 Message-ID: <6D4DF854-CC45-410D-9F8B-9FB641666044@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4517764898109827757==" List-Id: --===============4517764898109827757== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello, > 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 don'= 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 tha= t will also provide input. That would be great indeed. If not, I will also take that as answer. >=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 less= 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 workarounds t= hat we have in the code base here, the days and weeks that is going into it, = this has surpassed the threshold where there is no growing or steady user bas= e any more. >>=20 >> Having said that, aarch64 (as of today) only has 1.29% of our users. Not p= articularly 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 like= to give people decent time to migrate away from this. Right now, we have lot= s of supply issues, it is already mid-August, which would result in about thr= ee months until EOL. Not that this would offend a large number of users, but = I don=E2=80=99t think that we should make life too much more complicated for = anyone than it has to be. >>=20 >> We still have a running distribution that does not have any significant pr= oblems on armv6l compared to the other architectures. It costs us build times= - yes. It might cost us some extra development time - yes. But this is what = we have signed up for when we adopted this architecture. So we have to bear s= ome responsibility. >>=20 >> -Michael >>=20 >>> On 2 Aug 2022, at 11:08, Peter M=C3=BCller w= rote: >>>=20 >>> Hello *, >>>=20 >>> in January [1], we already discussed the situation of 32-bit ARM, and set= tled on >>> demoting this architecture as "legacy" on [2], and advising people from b= uying new >>> 32-bit ARM hardware in the wiki. >>>=20 >>> To some extends, this architecture shares a similar fate than 32-bit Inte= l 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 IP= Fire >>> userbase does not justify the resources required for keeping the distribu= tion >>> reasonably maintained on this architecture. >>>=20 >>> The other night, we have therefore agreed on putting an end to IPFire sup= port for >>> 32-bit ARM, and take the question of the anticipated timeframe to this ma= iling list. >>> [3] >>>=20 >>> At the time of writing, Fireinfo reports 0.94% of all IPFire installation= s 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 oth= er critical >>> environments, I would be fine with announcing EOL for 32-bit ARM at the e= nd of >>> this year. However, as I am not running any affected IPFire installations= , 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 --===============4517764898109827757==--