Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

Posted Mar 4, 2021 15:19 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with by rodgerd
Parent article: Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

And that, in turn, is only a problem because expectations from code authors at the top of the stream through users at the bottom of the stream were not aligned. If the distro authors depending on it working on obscure platforms were willing to put the work in to keep obscure platforms working (which could include forking the source), or if they were clear that obscure platforms could break at any time, and you'd keep all the pieces, it wouldn't be as loud.

Instead, we've had a lot of heat about how it breaks builds on obscure platforms, mostly (with the honourable exception of M68k, where John Paul Adrian Glaubitz has stepped up saying that he'll work with people to get M68k supported, but needs more time to get Rust on M68k Linux working well) from people who aren't willing to put any work in to keep the C code in good shape.

Fundamentally, it all boils down to who expects what from whom - and this episode has brought some implicit expectations people have that haven't been talked about explicitly before now to the surface. Hopefully, the OSS community as a whole will come to a conclusion on what expectations are reasonable.