[tlbuild] aarch64/armv8h binary distribution?

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Johannes,

> when I got https://www.tug.org/texlive/build.html right, adding a new
> architecture/platform to TeXLive binaries essentially consists of
> getting the build process managed (and, of course, some willingness to
> maintenance).

Yes, basically. SOme continuity over the years would also be nice that
we don't have to search for other builders every new year.

> I am in doubt if it makes sense to include the (no longer that much
> new-and-shiny) AArch64 aka ARMv8h into the list of tlmgr's platforms
> (so please convince me! (-: ).

I am all for it (I think I have some devices like that ;-)

> So I don't know if the efforts for overhead, testing, integration and
> maintenance of, say, aarch64-linux into TL is in reasonable proportion

That is rather harmless. If you can provide binaries it only needs
a bit of tweaking in the perl modules to recognize them and adjust for
them. But that is not much pain.

We do *not* do testing by ourselves, this is again part of the builders
job - so it is all up to you!

> For myself, it would not make a big difference: I let my little SBC
> sweat for an hour in irregular intervals anyway, so I could also share
> the binaries with the less patient out there.

Sure enough. This can even be done already now. You can build from the
*released* 2017 sources (please not from svn trunk!) and make the
binaries available to us. Then I can do the rest.

Best

Norbert

--
PREINING Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
Accelia Inc.     +    JAIST     +    TeX Live     +    Debian Developer
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