[arch-dev-public] Shadowing i686, round 1

[Allan McRae]

On 14/12/16 08:05, NicoHood wrote:
> On 12/13/2016 08:04 PM, Balló György via arch-dev-public wrote:
>> 2016. 12.  13, kedd keltezéssel 12.29-kor Doug Newgard ezt írta:
>>> On Tue, 13 Dec 2016 19:16:53 +0100
>>> Balló György via arch-dev-public <arch-dev-public at archlinux.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> -1 for dropping i686 completely.
>>>>
>>>> +1 for introducing automated builds, even if it's less secure.
>>>>
>>>> I would like to keep i686 supported, and willing to do anything
>>>> that is
>>>> needed to setup and maintain an official automated build server for
>>>> i686 packages (and possibly for other architectures).
>>>
>>> I've got to ask, why do you feel so strongly about it? It's been
>>> pointed out
>>> that i686 really doesn't fit in with the original goals of Arch
>>> anymore, is less
>>> and less supported upstream, and essentially untested. What is the
>>> compelling
>>> reason for keeping it around?
>>
>> Because I still use an i686-only system occasionally, and I prefer to
>> keep old hardware working with my favourite distribution. I agree that
>> building packages manually for a small percentage of users is
>> pointless. But most of the packages can be built for i686 without any
>> modifications. We just need an automated build server, which takes the
>> job.
>>
>> --
>> György Balló
>> Trusted User
>>
> 
> If we have reproduceable builds we could also use this buildserver to
> build the x64 packages. I know that this is a huge task, but then we
> could automate the package building better in a centralized place. And
> instead of dropping i686 we could integrate arm as well.
> 
> Those will not be officially supported, but we could give people access
> to fix those arch specific problems. Normal maintainers can focus on x64
> development while some others have a place to distribute and maintain
> other architectures of their favorite os.
> 

If we had a build server, I'd prefer we concentrated on Arch's original
goals.  To provide a more optimised distribution than everyone else.
All other distros have caught up to us these days. Some more optimised
x86_64 variants would be good...

A