[arch-ports] [i686] Next steps

[Bartłomiej Piotrowski]

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