ARM as a primary architecture

[Peter Robinson]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 3:23 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Brendan Conoboy wrote:
>> Hypothetically speaking, if presented with an ARM system that builds
>> packages, on average, 3x faster than x86, will you advocate that x86 be
>> dropped to secondary and ARM be PA exclusively?
>
> Not if most computers (which to me means desktops, notebooks, maybe
> netbooks, but most definitely not smartphones) are still x86.
>
> We didn't make Cray or S/390 our primary architecture either, in the days
> where the fastest supercomputers weren't x86 clusters yet. ;-)

No, but then speed of building isn't the only criteria of becoming a
primary arch. Ultimately we're asking FESCo to define the criteria so
we can assess whether we meet them and wish to progress to a primary
arch. We're (being ARM SIG, FESCo and pretty much everyone else) well
and truly aware the only thing you care about is build speed, and I
can understand that, I would care too if I had to build QT on a
regular basis.

> If we really do get to a point where x86 is dead and everything is ARM (and
> hopefully by then we'll also have ARM builders at least as fast as the x86
> ones!), that will be the point where I will indeed advocate that x86 be
> dropped to secondary and ARM be the exclusive primary arch (even though it'd
> hurt my personal usage because I'm not the type who replaces his computer
> every year). But right now we're very far from that.

But it's not just about computers, I'm very surprised that being the
KDE advocate you are that you don't want to run your hard work on the
KDE based Spark/Vivaldi tablet.

>> Sure it's hypothetical, but if that one variable changes, how does your
>> position change?
>
> Well, of course, in that case, ARM being added as an additional primary
> architecture would be at least acceptable. (It doesn't affect the question
> of whether it'd be USEFUL though. See also the previous paragraphs.)

We already know that it's going to be useful, that's ultimately why
we're requesting it. Ultimately whether it is useful to you
particularly is a moot point as you are not the Fedora project as a
whole and hence the whole Fedora project doesn't revolve around you.
ARM's possible promotion to primary arch isn't about you, or even the
ARM SIG, it's a question of whether it's useful to the Fedora project
as a whole. I personally believe it is, as do numerous other people
people, groups, and other organisations, hence the reason a number of
us have put in a considerable amount of work to make it usable. The
same could be said about the KDE project within Fedora, you find it
useful, I've never used it and hence it is useless to me but that
doesn't mean I try and have it removed from the project because I am
just one person and not the project and there are a number of people
that have put a considerable amount of time into the KDE sub project.
I don't really see the ARM request to be any different. I could the
same argument about KDE in terms of the number of desktops that you
are using about ARM and the number of architectures.

Peter