ppc64el: archive qualification page

Contents

ppc64el: archive qualification page
1. Questions for new architectures

Questions for new architectures

Are machines available to buy for the general public?

Yes. You can buy the machines at the market. Two of them are available at the moment:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/s812l-s822l/

The data sheet could be IBM Power System S812L and S822L data sheet

Is full source available?

Yes. The full stack is open source.
Kernel support is already upstream
Toolchain (GCC, glibc, gdb, binutils) support is already upstream also

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)?

Yes; it's related to the ppc64 and powerpc ports, but with a different/newer ABI (ELFv2), and running in little endian mode. A multi-arch arrangement with the other ports is not feasible, since the kernel doesn't support bi-endianness.

Are there 3 or more developers (or NMs) actively maintaining the port? Who are they?

The current development team has one Debian New Members and one Debian Developers. Also, since this architecture is supported on Ubuntu, there are a lot of DD from Canonical that helps the platform.

https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el#Development_Team

What sort of architecture is this? Desktop/workstation? Mainframe/supercomputer? Embedded? Something else?

Servers. Running in bare metal and on KVM guests

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?

Yes, there are users -- at this moment, there are 2 or 3 users around.

Is there kernel and toolchain support? At what level? Are the latest versions supported, or are legacy releases required for compatibility with some hardware?

Yes. The architecture support started with these versions, which are recent:
Linux kernel: 3.13
GCC: 4.8
glibc: 2.18
binutils: 2.24

Has the ABI stabilised, or are there major ABI changes coming up? Is the ABI stable enough to ensure users will be able just "apt-get dist-upgrade" from one version to the next?

Yes. The ABI is stable, and supported with the GNU toolchain (binutils, glibc, GCC).
The ABI document is available at https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el.

How do you install a system? (URL to a HOWTO)

Currently, running debootstrap from another port/architecture and running debootstrap second-stage from the port, or using debian installer.

https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el

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)?

Yes. Around 9k architecture-dependent source packages were built, and are available for download.
Check it at https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el

Recently, Debian start to build ppc64el package also. Check in http://buildd.debian.org/

What hardware is potentially available as a fast buildd?

The servers on which this port runs -- they are sufficiently fast for building packages.

Is there an example box developers can login to to see if it works?

Yes. You can find it at development machines at https://wiki.debian.org/ppc64el#Development_machines

It's also worth considering whether the port has any special requirements. If the port is mainly for embedded systems, it may be appropriate to have different installation or release arrangements compared to normal desktop/workstation architectures.

ArchiveQualificationppc64el