Make ppc64 secondary arch - don't block builds (was: Dealing with ppc64 BRs)

[Tom Lane]

Jesse Keating <jkeating at redhat.com> writes:
> But I find it troublesome that we're going to make /everybody/ care
> about something that 1% of our user base has, so that the 1% has a
> better life.  Isn't open source about scratching your own itch and
> making it easy for others to scratch theirs?  We're providing a way for
> non-maintstream arches to play along side the main stream and have
> access to fix things when they go awry, but asking volunteers to care
> about exotic arches is just silly and rude.

What I'm worried about is that the distribution will go from x86-centric
to x86-only, with large chunks of functionality that simply doesn't work
on any non-Intel architecture and with no interest on the part of the
primary maintainer in making it work.  A few volunteers handling a
secondary arch aren't going to get any traction in that environment.

Now, if you think it's a good thing for Intel to have a monopoly on
processor design, and if you think that Red Hat will soon abandon
support for all non-Intel processors in RHEL (note: I do not actually
know what our plans are in that respect), then sure, make Fedora
x86-specific.

Up to now, Fedora Core was known to be reasonably portable because the
same engineer handling any Core package had to also build it for RHEL,
but with the disappearance of the distinction between Core and Extras
that's not much comfort anymore.  My point is basically that I want to
see Extras trying to achieve the portability Core had, not allow Core
to slide down to the non-portability Extras had.

			regards, tom lane