Intention to drop sparc32 support for Lenny

The sparc32 port has been struggling for some time. Last month Jurij 
Smakov, currently the most active Debian Sparc porter, raised the question 
if support sparc32 should be dropped for Lenny [1].

The main reason is the fact that sparc32 support is no longer being 
maintained upstream for the kernel [2]. A result of that is that the 
2.6.21 kernel is currently broken, which forces the issue.

Another reason is that dropping sparc32 support will allow optimization 
for sparc64 which will result in improved support for the modern sparc 
systems from Sun and Hitachi. Other distributions have already made this 
choice.

Unless a group of people is willing to commit to providing the needed 
upstream kernel and toolchain support for sparc32, the Debian project 
will be forced to drop sparc32 for Lenny. Doing this early in the release 
cycle has the advantage of allowing sufficient time to work on optimizing 
support for sparc64.

Given the current problems with sparc32 in the 2.6.21 kernel, the final 
decision on this will be made before the end of this month.

Frans Pop

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2007/04/msg00044.html
[2] http://marc.info/?l=linux-sparc&m=117407830512186&...