Re: [PATCH] Remove ia64-linux-gnu

[Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner@web.de>]

Dear Adhemerval, all,

On 04.11.23 20:02, Adhemerval Zanella wrote:
> Linux 6.7 removed ia64 from the official tree [1], following the general
> principle that a glibc port needs upstream support for the architecture
> in all the components it depends on (binutils, GCC, and the Linux
> kernel).

> Apart from the removal of sysdeps/ia64 and
> sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/ia64, there are updates to various comments
> referencing ia64 for which removal of those references seemed
> appropriate. The configuration is removed from README and
> build-many-glibcs.py.

> The CONTRIBUTED-BY, elf/elf.h, manual/contrib.texi
> (the porting mention), *.po files, config.guess, and longlong.h are not
> changed.

> For Linux it allows cleanup some clone2 support on multiple
> files.
> The following bug can be closed as WONTFIX: BZ 22634 [2], BZ
> 14250 [3], BZ 21634 [4], BZ 10163 [5], BZ 16401 [6], and BZ 11585 [7].

> [1] >
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=43ff221426d33db909f7159fdf620c3b052e2d1c
> [2] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=22634
> [3] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14250
> [4] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21634
> [5] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=10163
> [6] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16401
> [7] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11585

The speed this happens really surprises me and I hope there is no need
to rush with this removal, I would like to comment on your points in [8]
but need some more time for further research into this matter to get a
better picture of how much work ia64 is in the glibc.

[8]: https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2023-November/152497.html

Only so much now, we would like to maintain Linux/ia64 (there is the
possibility that this returns to the kernel in a year's time, see [9])
and we also - as you already found out - started to work on the math
issues for ia64 in the glibc. We started this roughly just a month ago
and together with Aurelien's patch could make about 80 tests pass (30
FAIL => PASS, 50 UNSUPPORTED => PASS). That is not a very big thing, but
compared to what happened in this regard in the last ten years, it's not
bad I'd say, for a month's time.

[9]:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ia64/CAHk-=whFLZ67ffzt1juryCYcYz6eL_XjQF8WucDzwUR5H65+rA@mail.gmail.com/

Cheers,
Frank