[tlbuild] PPC builds

[Johannes Hielscher]

Am Sat, 31 Mar 2018 15:13:13 +0200
schrieb Mojca Miklavec <mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com>:

> > I just had a mail conversation with Karl: my debian powerpc-linux
> > can’t compile texlive anymore (gcc is too old). So unless somebody
> > else steps in, powerpc-linux will have to be deleted from texlive.
> > As for “users of a (reasonably modern) Linux on PowerPC hardware,”
> > I have never seen such a mythical beast...  
> 
> In order to compile TeX Live binaries one needs at least Debian 8,
> while Debian 9 already dropped support for that architecture. It looks
> like Gentoo still supports it (but honestly, I cannot imagine a Gentoo
> user wanting third-party binaries, right? :)

Actually, I am one of those (-: , and I enjoy(ed) having a single,
central, NFS-shared TL installation serving numerous platforms,
including Gentoo/ppc. But I don't mind the challenges to compile TL for
myself now. I just wondered (thanks, Thomas, for the clarification).

> 
> I'm reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation, but I
> assume any of those users would probably want 64-bit binaries
> (potentially little endian?), so these binaries would not help in any
> way.

Yes. TL is facing a hard cut of burying all ``new-world'' aka 32-bit
big-endian/AIM PowerPC ports by now. But maybe this makes things easier
for TL19, when we all have those fancy Talos workstations...

> I also wonder if the number of of sparc-solaris users of our binaries
> exceeds zero. Maybe we should implement some kind of big "red" warning
> in the installer for some architectures, saying: "if you are still
> using these binaries, please leave us feedback; if we don't get any
> feedback, the binaries will be removed next year".

I second this. Builders shouldn't have to guess if supporting some
legacy platform is useful for people out there, or rather their
personal hobby. Users of those platforms should know this, so let's
encourage them to give feedback.

Then, we have the platform list at
https://www.tug.org/texlive/build.html (that has to be revised anyway).
Perhaps, split it into active (binaries from tlnet/svn) and passive
ports (formerly packaged, build instructions may still be useful).


Best,
Johannes