freebsd / fcp Goto Github PK

I use fxp, dc and xl. My firewall has all three installed.

https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0100.md

FCP 100: Adding armv7 MACHINE_ARCH

From https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=arch&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+12.2-RELEASE:

…
           Architecture    Initial Release    Final Release
           aarch64         11.0
           alpha           3.2                6.4
           amd64           5.1
           arm             6.0                12.x
           armeb           8.0                11.4
           armv6           10.0
           armv7           12.0
…

@bsdimp

Please don't take this as anything but an observation.

First of all, I fully understand the position taken by this paper. There are only so many resources available to The Project. This kind of reminds me of direction I was given when I was working as an MVS systems programmer writing kernel code for the IBM mainframe. My director at the time had an 80/20 rule whereby he did not want to pay [my salary] for features that only 20% of the install base might want to use. I fully understand this and as a FreeBSD developer, with very limited time myself: I have more projects I want to finish in my pipeline than I have time to sit down focus my attention on in the near future. I'm sure other people in The Project are most likely in the same position. This position of the paper is totally understandable.

OTOH, I see the drivers that are being proposed removed here are supported by the other *BSDs and many Linux distros, including Red Hat (& Fedora). I don't think we want to place ourselves in the position or have the reputation that we support only the newest of hardware. Maybe when the drivers are removed they be moved to ports and supported on a best efforts basis, like drm will be. This is certainly an option.

Another option might be to a Linux KPI shim, like DRM is using, to support, using Linux drivers, NICs we may not want to support in base ourselves or support new hardware until we have better (better performing) native support. (The lag between when Linux supports new hardware and FreeBSD does is sometimes noticeable and people have asked me this in person on many occasions.)

Finally, I'm not saying "let's not do this." I fully understand the issues. I am asking where to from here?

Thoughts?