Selection of roadmap for i386 platform End-of-Life (EOL)

John Marino dragonflybsd at marino.st
Thu May 2 00:17:01 PDT 2013


On 5/1/2013 23:36, Dan Cross wrote:
> I personally don't care for the idea of focusing on one architecture,
> because having more is often a forcing function to keep the code tidy
> and portable and avoid unnecessary hardware dependencies.

I think everyone agrees with you on this point.

> But if that'sthe case, make it multiple actively supported and developed
> architectures; maybe some sort of ARM or MIPS based port would be both
> good and very practical?

There is a lot of interest in having an ARM64 port.  It seems like all 
none of the active developers have time to work on this though.  I 
believe the DragonFly project would embrace an individual that makes a 
serious attempt at a port, and he/she would be supported during the 
process.  Any volunteers?

> Putting a lot of effort into i386 for more
> than a few more years is going to be a dead end and feels like
> misplacing resources that could be better applied towards pushing the
> system forward in other dimensions.  So I'm for the idea of setting a
> sunset date for i386, for what it's worth (which is approximately
> nothing :-)).

Thanks for your input!  Supporting multiple architectures is the right 
idea, and hopefully those architectures that have a bright future.

John



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