Re: Plan needed for switching m68k to 32-bit alignment

[Thorsten Glaser <tg@debian.org>]

On Sat, 26 Oct 2024, Finn Thain wrote:

>> The following packages require 32-bit alignment:
>>
>> - mold
>> - LLVM
>> - gccgo
>> - Qt5 (several packages affected)
>> - Qt6 (several packages affected)
>> - OpenJDK (all versions)
>> - Python >= 3.13
>> - Rust
>
>That seems to imply that someone requires that those packages are ported.

Yes, we do. Rust especially is killing the entire FOSS ecosystem.

These all are conditio sine qua nōn when it comes to continuing
Linux/m68k, as a whole.

>Absent the right conditions, perhaps it is best focus limited porter and
>developer effort on patching only those packages that are really required.

I tried my hand at Qt5. About 20 man-hours in I essentially gave up,
and that was without even getting to something I could put to a
compile and runtime test.

“Natural” alignment of data types has essentially become a requirement
these days, and m68k is the only true outlyer (i386 could in theory, but
the Unix psABI designers were sensible enough to not do it).

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
<igli> exceptions: a truly awful implementation of quite a nice idea.
<igli> just about the worst way you could do something like that, afaic.
<igli> it's like anti-design.  <mirabilos> that too… may I quote you on that?
<igli> sure, tho i doubt anyone will listen ;)