launchpad-users team mailing list archive

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The old 32-bit powerpc architecture was removed from Ubuntu in Ubuntu
17.04 [1].  This means that all releases that still supported it are now
in ESM, and ESM doesn't include powerpc support.  We're therefore
considering decommissioning Launchpad's powerpc builders.  Note that the
64-bit ppc64el architecture would be *unaffected* by this change.

There are some positive reasons for us to do this as well as simple
cleanup.  For a complicated chain of reasons, retaining powerpc support
requires us to retain support for running launchpad-buildd on Python 2,
which we could otherwise remove.  There are also currently some problems
with getting 32-bit powerpc VMs working on our latest POWER compute
nodes; those may be fixable, but perhaps if we decommission the
architecture then we wouldn't have to bother figuring out what the
problem is.

However, if we do this it will make it permanently impossible to run any
powerpc builds (.deb packages, snaps, etc.) on Launchpad, and it's
unlikely to be possible to undo this change.  It therefore seems prudent
to ask around: does anyone know of any reason why we might need to add
powerpc support to Ubuntu 16.04 ESM, or otherwise retain any powerpc
build capability in Launchpad?

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2016-December/001199.html

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson@xxxxxxxxxx]