[lsb-discuss] LSB for mipsel

[Roger So]

Mats, thank you for your very detailed reply.

Wichmann, Mats D wrote:
> There must be something in the air, that's the third recent
> inquiry about adding an architecture to LSB so that some
> advantage could be taken of LSB testing (up to and including
> actual certification as you mention). The other two recent 
> requests having been Sparc and ARM.

Yes it seems LSB is getting more traction, but strangely the demand is 
coming from the hardware vendors rather than ISVs or end users.  Perhaps 
the much-improved testing tools have something to do with it?

> It's a fair bit of work and also may require some ongoing
> time commitment.  It's hard to put a precise estimate on
> it because some tasks may have variability depending on
> the familiarity of the implementor with the necessary
> information. Since the question has come up several times
> now, I'll go into a bit more grotty detail than I have for
> the previous queries.

It does seem a fair amount of work, one which I don't think Sun Wah can 
take all by ourselves; we will have to see how committed Lemote and/or 
CAS are.

Before anyone asks: China Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the government 
entity who designed the CPU and calls the design "Godson". Lemote is the 
commercial arm of CAS charged to commercialize Godson, and brands the 
actual CPUs in their computers "Loongson".

> Note that normally we have required two interested
> distributions to consider an architecture fully
> supported, otherwise the standard looks like "how
> FOO implemented mipsel" rather than representing an
> industry consensus and all that.  We did have some
> past history with problems when we didn't enforce that.
> If that doesn't end up working out, we'll cross that
> bridge when we come to it.

I understand, I think I know which part of the history you are referring 
to in fact. Fortunately it's fairly certain that another vendor will be 
supporting Loongson as well (no, I don't mean Sun Wah + Debian.)

> As time goes on, the architecture will need some
> maintenance, making sure that new additions are
> properly reflected, etc.  So there should be someone
> who can be considered the "champion" of that architecture.
> And a machine will need to remain available in the build farm.

This is best handled by the hardware vendor themselves I think.

Cheers
Roger