Two new architectures bootstrapping in unstable - MBF coming soon

To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org

Subject: Two new architectures bootstrapping in unstable - MBF coming soon

From: Wookey <wookey@wookware.org>

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 02:46:05 +0100

Message-id: <[🔎] 20140827014605.GF24824@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk>

Mail-followup-to: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org

Hi folks, We are excited to announce that in the last two weeks two new architectures have been added to the archive: arm64 and ppc64el. Both are now building furiously: https://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-quarter-big.png A lot of people are working hard to get them to a releasable state in time for Jessie. * The arm64 architecture targets ARM's latest v8 architecture which includes the 64-bit AArch64 execution state. Much more information is available at https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port * The ppc64el architecture targets Power 7+ and Power 8 CPUs running in little endian-mode and uses the new Open Power ELFv2 ABI. See https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el for more details. So: if you get bug reports about build failures in your package(s) on these architectures, *ESPECIALLY* if your package blocks other builds, please do fix them promptly, or expect NMUs to occur. These are not (yet!) release architectures where problems will block package migration. There will be further mail when that status changes. Mass Bug Filing Coming Real Soon Now! ------------------------------------- There will shortly be a mass bug filing on packages which FTBFS on our new architectures due to out of date autoconf files (and don't already have bugs about this). These packages will typically fail to build on any new architecture - the problem is a general one. This wiki page explains the reasons why dh-autoreconf is recommended as normal build procedure (for autotools-using packages), and provides maintainer-oriented advice on how to implement this (it's often trivial, but not always if your autofoo is really old) https://wiki.debian.org/Autoreconf This process has actually been ongoing for about a year, but as an automated filing is about to occur we are announcing it here, as mandated for MBF exercises. To give an idea of the statistics: there was a peak of 630 packages (out of 10,000) which FTBFS on arm64 in debian-ports. This total is now down to 574. http://buildd.debian-ports.org/status/architecture.php?a=arm64&suite=sid Of those, something more than 60% are 'autoconf out of date'. On the newer official buildds, 240 have so far FTBFS (having built about 45% of the archive). Quite a lot of those packages already have bugs filed by porters: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-arm@lists.debian.org;tag=arm64 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?users=debian-powerpc@lists.debian.org;tag=ppc64el There are many bugs here which have not yet been fixed, mostly of the 'autoconf out of date' type. Clearly there are a lot more bugs to file yet! Please help us by responding to bugs in your packages quickly, and/or accept our NMUs in a positive manner! Thanks, the arm64 and ppc64el porters -------- Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/