[arch-ports] [i686] Next steps

[Erich Eckner]

Hi list,

I'd propose the following steps - open for discussion and as you might
notice more vague towards the end:

preparations:
- choose a name (my suggestion: archlinux32)
- set up / use some git hosting (e.g. github) for maintenance of
build-system, website, package-source-trees (there are two from
archlinux.org: svntogit/community.git and svntogit/packages.git?),
possibly our own packages (e.g. archlinux32-keyring?)
- clone, understand and modify archlinuxarm's plugbuild (does this have
some sort of documentation? - sry, I'm quite new to perl)

testing:
- set up build-clients (do they need to run i486/i586/i686 or can we
cross compile from x86_64?)
- compile, install, test packages
- keep this up in parallel to official archlinux.org's i686 (so we have
a sane benchmark and/or fallback)

production:
- hopefully change nothing but references in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist on
production systems ;-)

As Bartłomiej pointed out, it would be nice to have i486 and i586
supported, too (*yay*, I finally can run arch on my router!). This
shouldn't be a big deal if we really use archlinuxarm's plugbuild - they
support compiling for multiple different architectures anyway.

One thing I have no clue of, is how the isos are created. But probably
it's straight forward if we have some system running on archlinux32 and
installed "archiso".

regards,
Erich

On 30.01.2017 23:42, Bartłomiej Piotrowski wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> sorry for writing so late but there is limit of things I can accomplish
> every day and that list always includes some cat pictures.
> 
> As you are most likely aware, I recently announced the deprecation of
> i686 support. However I would like this to turn out into a second tier
> architecture.
> 
> I can imagine that there is no need for huge team of packagers; as i686
> isn't very different from x86_64, it will be mostly "catch up" game
> against base distribution (Arch). ARM team already did this work[1] so
> it's mostly about setting it up with few build servers. ARM port also
> maintains a separate git repository with modified PKGBUILDs that
> wouldn't otherwise build on ARM. I'd probably consider targeting i486 or
> i586 instead to include more old hardware. i686 misses the fanciest
> features anyway.
> 
> So these are my 5 cents. I keep an eye on the mailing list and will try
> to reply in timely manner to any questions.
> 
> Bartłomiej
> 
> [1] http://github.com/archlinuxarm
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