Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] ia64: Remove support

[matoro <matoro_mailinglist_grub-devel@matoro.tk>]

On 2023-05-11 10:29, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On Thu, 11 May 2023 at 15:34, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
> <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, 2023-05-11 at 14:17 +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>> > On Thu, 11 May 2023 at 14:14, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
>> > <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > On Thu, 2023-05-11 at 14:06 +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
>> > > > Itanium IA-64 support is obsolete, and implements its own flavor of EFI
>> > > > boot that deviates from other architectures. Given that IA64 is unused
>> > > > and unmaintained, it makes no sense to pretend that the EFI changes we
>> > > > are making are tested or supported on IA64, so let's just get rid of it.
>> > >
>> > > But I just recently tested GRUB from git on IA64 and it worked without
>> > > any problems. We're using GRUB to boot Debian on IA64.
>> > >
>> >
>> > IA-64 is a dead platform, and a waste of electricity.
>> 
>> I was just making a statement regarding the testability of the code. 
>> That's all.
>> 
> 
> Fair enough. That is good to know actually - that way, we have a known
> working state right before we remove it.
> 
>> > Feel free to keep using it, but please stop demanding that our people
>> > keep wasting their time on it. If you want to support it in Debian,
>> > you can carry it as a downstream patch and shoulder the maintenance
>> > burden.
>> 
>> Who is "our people"? Do you think that you are part of the community 
>> and
>> I am not? I don't think this kind of hostility is justified. Neither 
>> you
>> nor I own this project.
>> 
> 
> Apologies - I had meant to type 'other people' not 'our people'. I
> rarely contribute to GRUB myself, so I wouldn't consider myself more a
> part of this community than anyone else.
> 
> But my point remains: I have inferred from your response (and your
> involvement in similar discussions around the Linux kernel) that you
> would prefer Itanium support to be retained, right?
> 
> So could you explain who you think should carry the maintenance
> burden? IA64 will be the only EFI architecture in GRUB that does not
> boot via an EFI stub in Linux, and this deviation means that retaining
> support for it is going to take actual developer and maintainer
> bandwidth. GRUB gets very little of that as it is, which means that
> keeping IA64 support alive comes at the cost of worse support for
> other architectures and platforms. (The series that this patch is part
> of breaks the ia64 build, and i i struggle to see why i should care
> about that)
> 
> Very few of those people have access to such systems to begin with
> (probably none), and the companies that manufactured them stopped
> supporting them in the open source years ago, so testing these changes
> is not straight-forward, making it unreasonable to demand this from
> contributors. Also, it is unclear to me why the needs of the few
> people that do still run such a system are not served by a build based
> on today's GRUB tree, and why ia64 support needs to be retained going
> forward.
> 
> I'll leave it to the maintainers whether to merge this patch or not,
> but if this needs to keep working on ia64 as well, someone else will
> have to step up.

Hi, I also have a functioning GRUB install on ia64 EFI.  My machine is 
fully open and available for debugging work, including on kernel and 
bootloader (hard resets can be done via management console).

If there is any way this support can be saved or at least delayed by 
providing real hardware to work on, please reach out.  The environment 
is completely remote and available for anybody who would like to give it 
a try.