Sleepless in Warnemünde

Debian Etch has been released lately, as you may know, and the work on Debian Lenny is already starting. For some of the DDs the work is way much different than for the rest of the DDs: the good ol’ brave porters of m68k.
Stephen Marenka asked on debian-release what is needed to get back and be able to release with Lenny?
The answers are shaking:

1. To get back to testing: Basically, the release team didn’t mind the
state we had with m68k in testing recently – basically, we just ignored
it, but it was still there. The release team didn’t asked for full
dropping from testing, we just didn’t mind either way. We also wouldn’t
mind for m68k to be back in testing – as long as we can just continue to
ignore it.

2. To get released (or a realistic chance to): Basically, make sure that
the toolchain works (see the other mails), and get really fast buildds
(otherwise, the security team would probably veto the inclusion). The
second might happen with Coldfire, but – the how is your part, not ours
(i.e. if you do it some other way, that’s ok as well of course).

Having said that, I can understand if the ftp-masters don’t want to have
an architecture be in testing unless there is reason to believe it is
possible to include it in the next stable release, but that’s not the
domain of the release team.

ad 1)
Ah, ok… as long as we are ignored, everything is fine. But how will testing m68k get updated when the testing scripts ignore m68k? Pardon me, but isn’t this a little bit strange, at least?

ad 2)
Getting really fast buildds – good joke, indeed! Or is this a Friday, 13th habit like April Fools Day?

Conclusion)
Let’s summarize: we can release with Lenny, when we get back in shape – but testing is needed for this, where we’re ignored for. And without faster buildds for an arch such as m68k, there’s simply no way back to make it into a release again – because of this.
Describing Coldfire as such a possibility for faster machine seems a little bit strange to me. CF is totally new, there’s not progress yet on the CF front to my knowledge and a combined m68k/CF port may introduce other drawbacks, which nobody can predict for sure today. Do you really believe that ftp-masters or release team will allow such a port to get released? I don’t.
Getting faster buildd in a reasonable amount of time is illusory for m68k. We can get more buildds online, but not “really fast buildds”. Despite one older blog post of me, I’ll receive just another ‘060 m68k soon (to be hosted by a fellow DD). A few days ago, two other m68k buildds were added to the m68k buildd rotation list. That will make 3 more buildds for the m68k.

Anyway, in most cases your first impression is the correct one and my first impression of the Vancouver Massacre/Proposal was: this is a plan to drop m68k!
Well, the lastest incidents confirm this impression, IMHO.
After all, I think that the m68k port would be best served by dropping Debian instead of being dropped by the project. The m68k port – de facto – has been dropped already. I’m disappointed.

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