Confusion with new platforms and packages
Nathan Robertson
nathanr at nathanr.net
Thu Apr 15 01:49:06 UTC 2004
Justin M. Forbes wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 07:57:55AM +1000, Nathan Robertson wrote:
<SNIP stuff I agree with>
>>FWIW, I believe that we're just "completing" the support for PowerPC,
>>not adding a new platform, because it pre-existed in devel. A community
>>driven release of a platform previously unsupported in any way by Red
>>Hat would certainly be send a really good signal to the doubters out
>>there that Fedora Core isn't just Red Hat, just like Mozilla wasn't just
>>Netscape (and they had their doubters too).
>
> There is more to it than just completing support for an existing arch.
> even the PPC stuff is aimed at IBM P-Series, and not necessarily listed as
> a Fedora supported arch.
Indeed, but in this case, the two architectures are similar enough for
me to make the above statement. I have FC/devel booting, with Gnome and
all the apps I use running on two of my Apple powermac machines. As in,
straight out of devel, not some largely hacked thing.
> That said, there is certainly effort underway, as
> I know the Yellowdog folks have been working with Fedora as have Paul
> Nasrat and others to make it a supported platform. Submitting new packages
> to bugzilla as RFEs is certainly the right thing to do provided you have
> looked over the licensing, packaging, etc. But do not expect them to be
> blindly accepted. Red Hat has been very supportive of comminity work for
> alternative architectures, but it does tread new ground, and patience is
> required.
Indeed. Don't think that I'm beating Red Hat up here. I'm just asking
for clarification on their policy / vision.
> Considering where we are in the release calendar, and the amount
> of pain we went through with the x86_64 release, I would not expect a
> PPC/PPC64 Mac release until FC3.
Which is what I had in mind.
> In the meantime, building working trees,
> and showing that it can be supported without a ton of effort can go a long
> way towards getting things ready for the FC3 release cycle. I will be
> working with PPC64 myself, joining the efforts of those listed above. But
> then again, I am not a RH employee.
The thing that differentiates the Apple powerpc port from the x86-64
port is that Red Hat are actually shipping a x86-64 product, and IMO are
unlikely to ship a RHEL/apple-powerpc, despite it being the second
largest Linux architecture according to http://popcon.debian.org/ (third
actually, but #2 is "unknown").
Which is really the point of the original email - to what extent are Red
Hat going to let the Fedora project follow the needs and wants of users
who are willing to contribute vs. what they're shipping / going to ship
in RHEL? My email was not a criticism, just one asking for clarification
on Red Hat's vision for Fedora.
Nathan.
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