ARM as a primary architecture

[Tom Lane]

Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> I thought it was a serious error to drop PPC from primary-arch status.

> I think it was one of the best decisions Fedora ever made. I'm glad I don't 
> have to deal with slow PPC builders anymore, nor to fix build errors for 
> such an obsolescent architecture. PPC stopped being relevant the day Apple 
> switched to x86.

That opinion is flat out ridiculous.  Or maybe it makes sense if you
think consumer desktops are the be-all and end-all; but they are not.
(If you do think that Apple's decisions are an important factor here,
why are you so much not on board with pushing ARM?  Apple's certainly
doing their darndest to make ARM a mainstream arch.)

>> But now that we've done that, putting in another one should be a high
>> priority wish-list item.

> I strongly disagree on that point. Non-x86 primary architectures are a major 
> pain that really needs to be avoided.

And that opinion is simply wrong.  You have provided no justification
for allowing Fedora to get boxed in on a single architecture, which is
the inevitable end result of the thinking you espouse.  Pointing at
individual deficiencies of individual arches is not a justification;
especially not in view of all the problems x86 itself has got.  The
Linux community has slowly worked around x86's limitations, the same
could happen for any other arch.  The only reason this doesn't happen is
people trying to justify not putting in the work by rationalizing that
"that architecture is obsolete" or "Intel is the top of the heap today,
so I don't need to bother thinking about anything else".  Or in other
words: you sir are not part of the solution, you are part of the
problem.

I'm not saying that I think ARM is the ideal other primary arch, but
it seems to have more momentum than most of the other choices.  We
should be looking for ways to make it a PA, or make something else
a PA.  We should not be looking for excuses for monoculturalism.
If we settle for that, we'll have only ourselves to blame when we
become irrelevant, not too many years down the road.

			regards, tom lane