Re: Question on BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT in GCC on NetBSD/m68k

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

On Sun, 2025-06-08 at 11:10 +1000, Finn Thain wrote:
> > Furthermore, we're still talking about a hobbyist platform here which 
> > hasn't been in production use for more than ten years. It doesn't really 
> > matter whether we break the ABI or not.
> > 
> 
> By the same argument, since Debian is comprised of volunteers and 
> hobbyists, it can be ignored by corporate-sponsored organizations, such as 
> the Rust Foundation, and by upstream maintainers employed by for-profit 
> companies. Yet they don't ignore us. Why do you think that is?

There is a clear difference between architectures that are actively used in
production as compared to architectures that are used for hobbyists projects
only.

We couldn't push such changes on x86_64, for example, because there is huge
worldwide userbase meaning that introducing such an ABI-breaking change would
come at a huge cost. On m68k, on the other hand, the user base is so small
and insignificant that the costs for introducing the change are negligible and
the profits for making the change strongly outweigh the disadvantages.

Please don't pretend that you don't see a significant difference here. Your
argument is dishonest and you're just trying to derail the discussion.

> > And it's not like there isn't strong case for making this change. As I 
> > have tirelessly explained, the current port with 2 bytes alignment is 
> > simply no longer feasible since an increasing number of packages either 
> > require 4 bytes alignment or require Rust.
> > 
> > These include more and more fundamental packages such as coreutils, the 
> > kernel or various Python packages such as python-cryptography. It's 
> > simply not an option to continue on the current path as it has become a 
> > dead-end.
> > 
> 
> Every CPU architecture is a dead end. This observation is as old as 
> Moore's Law.

Yes, and we all have to die some day. What's the point of bringing up this argument?

You are arguing in hyperboles which clearly shows you're not interested in a serious
discussion. Why are you even participating here?

> > I don't see the point in maintaining something that becomes increasingly 
> > useless because more and more packages are no longer buildable.
> 
> That's because you still haven't identified those packages in the Debian 
> archive which actually need porting.

I have posted that list several times already: https://wiki.debian.org/M68k/Alignment

Adrian

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