Purpose
The purpose of this page is to demonstrate that m68k meets the archive criteria.
Note that information has to be on the page directly, and verifiable. -- ajt@d.o I fail to see the point of replying to the same questions twice, which is why I replied with a 'See the m68kEtchReleaseRecertification page' to those questions which are answered there. But since you insist, I copied it from there; those answers are still valid, after all -- wouter@d.o
Requirements for architectures
Is port cursed?
Don't think so (WTF is "cursed" supposed to mean?)
Are machines available to general public?
The architecture is publicly available without NDA's via:
http://www.freescale.com (processors only; if the ?ColdFire stuff gets sorted out in time, also ?ColdFire eval boards]
Is full source available?
Source of the whole port is available. All of the packages use the same sources as the official Debian ports. In fact, it was an official architecture for Sarge.
Is this architecture related to other architectures already in the archive, or that also should be considered, either now or in the future? Can the related architectures be supported in a single architecture (eg, with a biarch arrangement)?
Currently there is no related architecture already in Debian, but we are looking into adding support for coldfire. As the coldfire's with MMU units are close to classic m68k, it may be possible to build the archive in a way that binaries will be usable across both architectures. If it turns out not to be possible, or then coldfire will need to be a different architecture.
Are there 3 or more developers (or n-ms) actively maintaining the port? Who are they?
As seen on m68kEtchReleaseRecertification:
Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>
Stephen R Marenka <smarenka@debian.org>
Christian T. Steigies <cts@debian.org>
Adam Conrad <adconrad@debian.org>
Michael Schmitz <schmitz@debian.org>
What sort of architecture is this? Desktop/workstation? Mainframe/supercomputer? Embedded? Something else?
The m68k processor was heavily used in early macintosh models, NeXT boxs, Amiga and Atari computers. Although most of these machines are now obsolete, the m68k has seen some use in the embedded market, especially with the coldfire family of processor
Does it have any users? If a desktop system, are there Debian admins who run Debian systems on the arch? If an embedded system are there real systems shipping that a Debian port will be useful for? If a mainframe system are there real systems with many users that a Debian port will be useful for? Who are they?
http://www.buildd.net/cgi/archvote.phtml lists >100 users.
Email sent to ajt@d.o on 2005-01-24 ~12:30 CET by ij
Is there kernel and toolchain support? At what level?
Yes. Andreas Schwab does glibc and gcc; the kernel mailinglist is at linux-m68k@vger.kernel.org; binutils by Ben Elliston.
How do you install a system? (URL to a HOWTO)
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/m68k -- the Debian installation manual.
Has a buildd been setup? How much of the archive has been built (count by source package, builds of old versions are fine for this case)?
12 build daemons, 79% of sid has current been built (02/28/2008).
What hardware is potentially available as a fast buildd?
No classic m68k hardware is available as a fast buildd, but the aranym emulator, which when combined with distcc has had great success in accelerating the build process.
Is there any corporate support of this arch, and the Debian port in particular?
Not currently. There is corporate support for the ?ColdFire architecture, however.
Is there an example box developers can login to to see if it works?
The following machines are available to developers:
- kullervo.debian.org
- crest.debian.org
Further requirements for OSes
Not applicable for this architecture.