drop ia64 from man pages?

drop ia64 from man pages?

[enh]

aiui linux 6.7 dropped ia64 support, but it lives on in the man pages
... clone(2) in particular has quite a lot of ia64-specific text. is
this intentional, or should we start removing this stuff?

Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi Elliott,

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 12:20:58PM -0400, enh wrote:
> aiui linux 6.7 dropped ia64 support, but it lives on in the man pages
> ... clone(2) in particular has quite a lot of ia64-specific text. is
> this intentional, or should we start removing this stuff?

We could move that text to the HISTORY section.  We should keep it, as
uses of that arch may want to read documentation about it, regardless of
it not being supported by new releases.

Say, you're using a 20-year old system, and want good documentation
about it.  You could find it in the latest version of the manual page.

Of course, we may omit some details that are unimportant, but we should
keep the main points about it in the HISTORY section.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

[enh]

i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?

a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
"...and use museum documentation" :-)

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 12:26 PM Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Elliott,
>
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 12:20:58PM -0400, enh wrote:
> > aiui linux 6.7 dropped ia64 support, but it lives on in the man pages
> > ... clone(2) in particular has quite a lot of ia64-specific text. is
> > this intentional, or should we start removing this stuff?
>
> We could move that text to the HISTORY section.  We should keep it, as
> uses of that arch may want to read documentation about it, regardless of
> it not being supported by new releases.
>
> Say, you're using a 20-year old system, and want good documentation
> about it.  You could find it in the latest version of the manual page.
>
> Of course, we may omit some details that are unimportant, but we should
> keep the main points about it in the HISTORY section.
>
>
> Have a lovely day!
> Alex
>
> --
> <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 7/16/25 12:30 PM, enh wrote:
> i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
> is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
> this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
> say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?
> 
> a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
> "...and use museum documentation" :-)

Agreed.

There is a balance here between documentation that covers a reasonable
number of use cases, documentation that is easy to maintain, and
documentation that is easy to read (without superfluous information,
either too new or too old).

It has been about 1.5 years since IA64 started being dropped, and I
don't see any reason to keep very specific documentation about it
around except as smaller interesting historical notes.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.

Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Eugene Syromyatnikov]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/16/25 12:30 PM, enh wrote:
> > i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
> > is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
> > this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
> > say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?
> >
> > a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
> > "...and use museum documentation" :-)
>
> Agreed.
>
> There is a balance here between documentation that covers a reasonable
> number of use cases, documentation that is easy to maintain, and
> documentation that is easy to read (without superfluous information,
> either too new or too old).
>
> It has been about 1.5 years since IA64 started being dropped, and I
> don't see any reason to keep very specific documentation about it
> around except as smaller interesting historical notes.

Depends on whether man pages limit themselves to reflecting only the
"current" version (whatever this is, as man-pages is not part of
either linux or glibc source tree), or strive to provide actual useful
reference for users of systems that may have different variants and
versions of the kernel and libc.  If it is the latter, outright
removal (instead of keeping all the pertinent information in the
history section) is pretty short-sighted.

> --
> Cheers,
> Carlos.
>
>


-- 
Eugene Syromyatnikov
mailto:evgsyr@gmail.com
xmpp:esyr@jabber.{ru|org}

Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 7/17/25 6:30 AM, Eugene Syromyatnikov wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 7/16/25 12:30 PM, enh wrote:
>>> i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
>>> is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
>>> this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
>>> say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?
>>>
>>> a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
>>> "...and use museum documentation" :-)
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> There is a balance here between documentation that covers a reasonable
>> number of use cases, documentation that is easy to maintain, and
>> documentation that is easy to read (without superfluous information,
>> either too new or too old).
>>
>> It has been about 1.5 years since IA64 started being dropped, and I
>> don't see any reason to keep very specific documentation about it
>> around except as smaller interesting historical notes.
> 
> Depends on whether man pages limit themselves to reflecting only the
> "current" version (whatever this is, as man-pages is not part of
> either linux or glibc source tree), or strive to provide actual useful
> reference for users of systems that may have different variants and
> versions of the kernel and libc.  If it is the latter, outright
> removal (instead of keeping all the pertinent information in the
> history section) is pretty short-sighted.

(1) Co-evolution.

The Linux man-pages project, and most projects, co-evolve with the
ecosystem.

At any point in time you can take the most pertinent release of a
project and use that. VCS history is available to everyone.

This is how downstream distributions have been evolving and serving
users.

(2) A loose matrix of "supported" (not "current")

The project, as I see it, has been providing useful information for a
loose matrix of supported kernels, supported C libraries (glibc, musl,
bionic), and supported international standards e.g. ISO C, POSIX etc.
along with other APIs from BSD etc.

(3) What is a valid variant?

Once something is deprecated my opinion is that we have a duty to
our users to attempt to cleanup the material and make it easier to
consume with less relevant information moved away from main sections
or pages.

At this point in time I'd say IA64 is deprecated in the current
releases of glibc and linux and so moving the related information,
or cleaning it up seems appropriate. How much of that to do I leave
up to Alejandro as editor (or contributors to work out).

What makes a valid variant though?

There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.

There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).

So between the two, there is still IA64 support present.

Supported (all upstream projects support it)
  -> Deprecated (current project releases have removed support)
     -> End of life (no actively maintained project support it)

I think we should cleanup and move content at the "deprecated"
phase, which is where we find IA64 today, and when we get to
EOL, we should be removing all the content related to it except
for historical references that serve an educational or
elucidating purpose.

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.

AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Walter Harms]

>What makes a valid variant though?
>There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.
>There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).

Maybe, i am using a LOT of embedded Systems and they are using sometimes
really old stuff. So sometimes i am thankfull for information about older variants.

reminder: man pages are not for server stuff only.
Same goes for older programms, you can only understand when you have the old documentation.

So as long as IA64 is in use, there is a chance some need that info.

________________________________________
Von: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. Juli 2025 14:13:54
An: Eugene Syromyatnikov
Cc: enh; Alejandro Colomar; linux-man
Betreff: Re: drop ia64 from man pages?

On 7/17/25 6:30 AM, Eugene Syromyatnikov wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 7/16/25 12:30 PM, enh wrote:
>>> i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
>>> is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
>>> this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
>>> say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?
>>>
>>> a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
>>> "...and use museum documentation" :-)
>>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> There is a balance here between documentation that covers a reasonable
>> number of use cases, documentation that is easy to maintain, and
>> documentation that is easy to read (without superfluous information,
>> either too new or too old).
>>
>> It has been about 1.5 years since IA64 started being dropped, and I
>> don't see any reason to keep very specific documentation about it
>> around except as smaller interesting historical notes.
>
> Depends on whether man pages limit themselves to reflecting only the
> "current" version (whatever this is, as man-pages is not part of
> either linux or glibc source tree), or strive to provide actual useful
> reference for users of systems that may have different variants and
> versions of the kernel and libc.  If it is the latter, outright
> removal (instead of keeping all the pertinent information in the
> history section) is pretty short-sighted.

(1) Co-evolution.

The Linux man-pages project, and most projects, co-evolve with the
ecosystem.

At any point in time you can take the most pertinent release of a
project and use that. VCS history is available to everyone.

This is how downstream distributions have been evolving and serving
users.

(2) A loose matrix of "supported" (not "current")

The project, as I see it, has been providing useful information for a
loose matrix of supported kernels, supported C libraries (glibc, musl,
bionic), and supported international standards e.g. ISO C, POSIX etc.
along with other APIs from BSD etc.

(3) What is a valid variant?

Once something is deprecated my opinion is that we have a duty to
our users to attempt to cleanup the material and make it easier to
consume with less relevant information moved away from main sections
or pages.

At this point in time I'd say IA64 is deprecated in the current
releases of glibc and linux and so moving the related information,
or cleaning it up seems appropriate. How much of that to do I leave
up to Alejandro as editor (or contributors to work out).

What makes a valid variant though?

There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.

There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).

So between the two, there is still IA64 support present.

Supported (all upstream projects support it)
  -> Deprecated (current project releases have removed support)
     -> End of life (no actively maintained project support it)

I think we should cleanup and move content at the "deprecated"
phase, which is where we find IA64 today, and when we get to
EOL, we should be removing all the content related to it except
for historical references that serve an educational or
elucidating purpose.

--
Cheers,
Carlos.

Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi all,

I've pushed this commit to my branch:
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/src/alx/linux/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?h=contrib&id=c0e5ca37b2a562b9e7b9e39fc9091ea7f2693d62>

If you think any of the details there are historically unimportant, we
can discuss removing them, but at first glane, all of them seem
relevant.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 12:18:28PM +0000, Walter Harms wrote:
> >What makes a valid variant though?
> >There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.
> >There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).
> 
> Maybe, i am using a LOT of embedded Systems and they are using sometimes
> really old stuff. So sometimes i am thankfull for information about older variants.
> 
> reminder: man pages are not for server stuff only.
> Same goes for older programms, you can only understand when you have the old documentation.
> 
> So as long as IA64 is in use, there is a chance some need that info.
> 
> ________________________________________
> Von: Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com>
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 17. Juli 2025 14:13:54
> An: Eugene Syromyatnikov
> Cc: enh; Alejandro Colomar; linux-man
> Betreff: Re: drop ia64 from man pages?
> 
> On 7/17/25 6:30 AM, Eugene Syromyatnikov wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM Carlos O'Donell <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 7/16/25 12:30 PM, enh wrote:
> >>> i didn't look at the other pages, but quite a lot on the clone(2) page
> >>> is actually about what glibc does ... but glibc already removed all
> >>> this stuff. so it should probably not be more than what we have for,
> >>> say, m68k which is just "read your kernel/libc source for more"?
> >>>
> >>> a corollary to "museum hardware should run museum software" might be
> >>> "...and use museum documentation" :-)
> >>
> >> Agreed.
> >>
> >> There is a balance here between documentation that covers a reasonable
> >> number of use cases, documentation that is easy to maintain, and
> >> documentation that is easy to read (without superfluous information,
> >> either too new or too old).
> >>
> >> It has been about 1.5 years since IA64 started being dropped, and I
> >> don't see any reason to keep very specific documentation about it
> >> around except as smaller interesting historical notes.
> >
> > Depends on whether man pages limit themselves to reflecting only the
> > "current" version (whatever this is, as man-pages is not part of
> > either linux or glibc source tree), or strive to provide actual useful
> > reference for users of systems that may have different variants and
> > versions of the kernel and libc.  If it is the latter, outright
> > removal (instead of keeping all the pertinent information in the
> > history section) is pretty short-sighted.
> 
> (1) Co-evolution.
> 
> The Linux man-pages project, and most projects, co-evolve with the
> ecosystem.
> 
> At any point in time you can take the most pertinent release of a
> project and use that. VCS history is available to everyone.
> 
> This is how downstream distributions have been evolving and serving
> users.
> 
> (2) A loose matrix of "supported" (not "current")
> 
> The project, as I see it, has been providing useful information for a
> loose matrix of supported kernels, supported C libraries (glibc, musl,
> bionic), and supported international standards e.g. ISO C, POSIX etc.
> along with other APIs from BSD etc.
> 
> (3) What is a valid variant?
> 
> Once something is deprecated my opinion is that we have a duty to
> our users to attempt to cleanup the material and make it easier to
> consume with less relevant information moved away from main sections
> or pages.
> 
> At this point in time I'd say IA64 is deprecated in the current
> releases of glibc and linux and so moving the related information,
> or cleaning it up seems appropriate. How much of that to do I leave
> up to Alejandro as editor (or contributors to work out).
> 
> What makes a valid variant though?
> 
> There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.
> 
> There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).
> 
> So between the two, there is still IA64 support present.
> 
> Supported (all upstream projects support it)
>   -> Deprecated (current project releases have removed support)
>      -> End of life (no actively maintained project support it)
> 
> I think we should cleanup and move content at the "deprecated"
> phase, which is where we find IA64 today, and when we get to
> EOL, we should be removing all the content related to it except
> for historical references that serve an educational or
> elucidating purpose.
> 
> --
> Cheers,
> Carlos.
> 
> 

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Askar Safin]

> I've pushed this commit to my branch:
> <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/src/alx/linux/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?h=contrib&id=c0e5ca37b2a562b9e7b9e39fc9091ea7f2693d62>

The link is broken. I get connection timeout.

--
Askar Safin

Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi Askar,

On Sat, Aug 09, 2025 at 11:19:53AM +0300, Askar Safin wrote:
> > I've pushed this commit to my branch:
> > <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/src/alx/linux/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?h=contrib&id=c0e5ca37b2a562b9e7b9e39fc9091ea7f2693d62>
> 
> The link is broken. I get connection timeout.

Yep, I suspect another blackout in my town.  I'm traveling, so I won't
be able to turn it back on until Monday.  :(


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Askar Safin]

 ---- On Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:49:45 +0400  Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> wrote --- 
 > Yep, I suspect another blackout in my town.  I'm traveling, so I won't
 > be able to turn it back on until Monday.  :(

I see that you don't want to remove all ia64 mentions from clone(2).
But is it okay to at least remove mentions of archs, which were removed more than 5 years ago, such as blackfin?
If you okay with that, I can author a patch.

--
Askar Safin
https://types.pl/@safinaskar

Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi Askar,

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 02:37:20PM +0400, Askar Safin wrote:
>  ---- On Sat, 09 Aug 2025 14:49:45 +0400  Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> wrote --- 
>  > Yep, I suspect another blackout in my town.  I'm traveling, so I won't
>  > be able to turn it back on until Monday.  :(
> 
> I see that you don't want to remove all ia64 mentions from clone(2).
> But is it okay to at least remove mentions of archs, which were removed more than 5 years ago, such as blackfin?
> If you okay with that, I can author a patch.

If you send a patch with concrete removals, I can tell you if I agree
with them.  In principle, I could agree with some removals.  It also
depends on the feedback from other contributors; it's not just me.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Eugene Syromyatnikov]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2025 at 12:37 PM Askar Safin <safinaskar@zohomail.com> wrote:
> But is it okay to at least remove mentions of archs, which were removed more than 5 years ago, such as blackfin?

"5 years" here sounds as if it is a long time ago.

-- 
Eugene Syromyatnikov
mailto:evgsyr@gmail.com
xmpp:esyr@jabber.{ru|org}

Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Carlos O'Donell]

On 7/18/25 8:18 AM, Walter Harms wrote:
>> What makes a valid variant though?
>> There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.
>> There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).
> 
> Maybe, i am using a LOT of embedded Systems and they are using sometimes
> really old stuff. So sometimes i am thankfull for information about older variants.

There is always a matching version of the man-pages that is
the same age as the sources you're working with... and so
documents the conditions under which the software was
developed?

> reminder: man pages are not for server stuff only.

Absolutely agreed. Wherever you can cram a Linux kernel and
userspace :-)

> Same goes for older programms, you can only understand when you have the old documentation.

This supports Elliot's comment that you can use the older versions
of the man-pages releases for these?

> So as long as IA64 is in use, there is a chance some need that info.

That information is not being removed from the git history or the
available releases.

e.g. git checkout man-pages-1.70

There are tags going back to 2004.

And very old archives:

https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/Archive/

-- 
Cheers,
Carlos.

Re: AW: drop ia64 from man pages?

[Alejandro Colomar]

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Hi Carlos,

On Fri, Jul 18, 2025 at 08:43:24AM -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> On 7/18/25 8:18 AM, Walter Harms wrote:
> > > What makes a valid variant though?
> > > There is no upstream supported glibc older than 2.32.
> > > There is no upstream supported Linux older than 5.4 (LTS).
> > 
> > Maybe, i am using a LOT of embedded Systems and they are using sometimes
> > really old stuff. So sometimes i am thankfull for information about older variants.
> 
> There is always a matching version of the man-pages that is
> the same age as the sources you're working with... and so
> documents the conditions under which the software was
> developed?

Michael Kerrisk had a strong opinion about the latest version of the
Linux man-pages project being always the best choice of documentation.
He didn't want to remove any information, unless it was truly irrelevant
even for historic systems.

I don't have good reasons to change that.  If something is really
superfluous, I'm open to removing it, but if not, I prefer keeping it.

> > reminder: man pages are not for server stuff only.
> 
> Absolutely agreed. Wherever you can cram a Linux kernel and
> userspace :-)
> 
> > Same goes for older programms, you can only understand when you have the old documentation.
> 
> This supports Elliot's comment that you can use the older versions
> of the man-pages releases for these?

I think Walter meant having documentation for the old system, possibly
in new versions of the documentation.

> > So as long as IA64 is in use, there is a chance some need that info.
> 
> That information is not being removed from the git history or the
> available releases.
> 
> e.g. git checkout man-pages-1.70
> 
> There are tags going back to 2004.

Actually, we have git history going back to man-pages-1.0, from 1993.
The history prior to man-pages-1.70 is less granular, at only one
commit per release, but it's still useful for some purposes.

	$ git log -3 --pretty=fuller a18a162dee92
	commit a18a162dee92d541eae37a5c51b59ba288d4cf82
	Author:     Krónos <Krónos@Sāturnus>
	AuthorDate: Mon Nov 29 00:00:00 1993 +0100
	Commit:     Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
	CommitDate: Mon Dec 19 21:01:32 2022 +0100

	    man-pages 1.2
	    
	    Link: <https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/ftpdocs/linux-local/manpages.archive/>
	    Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

	commit 84c15c9af67a6cfe821d2a6c8db6418af3c60bd0
	Author:     Krónos <Krónos@Sāturnus>
	AuthorDate: Mon Oct 11 00:00:00 1993 +0100
	Commit:     Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
	CommitDate: Mon Dec 19 21:01:32 2022 +0100

	    man-pages 1.0
	    
	    man-pages-1.1 seems to be missing.  :/
	    
	    Link: <https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/ftpdocs/linux-local/manpages.archive/>
	    Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

	commit c8eee6c3c1ec97ddc7b8572e30da3d193dcf0f9f
	Author:     Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
	AuthorDate: Mon Dec 19 20:15:55 2022 +0100
	Commit:     Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>
	CommitDate: Mon Dec 19 20:15:55 2022 +0100

	    void
	    
	    Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

You can find those in the 'prehistory' branch in the repo.

> And very old archives:
> 
> https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/Archive/

And also the pre-2.00 archives at Andries E. Brouwer's site, linked in
the commit messages above.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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