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OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware platforms, including machines with Alpha, PA-RISC, and SPARC64 processors. On each of them, the base system is able

by raimue 9y ago

OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware platforms, including machines with Alpha, PA-RISC, and SPARC64 processors. On each of them, the base system is able to compile itself. If rustc cannot even build itself on i386, what kind of support can we expect for other platforms with an even smaller user base? On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability is one of their main "selling" points. Furthermore, that would also mean to lose the developers that are interested in these alternative platforms and probably chose OpenBSD because of the platform support. Furthermore, such developers are usually not only contributing to platform-specific parts, but also to system utilities and ports. For the full list of platforms, see https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html

masklinn 9y ago
> On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability They… don't need to? That rustc can't compile itself on i386 doesn't mean you can't ship a rustc for i386, it just means you have to cross-compile it.
- _jal 9y ago
  Addressed in the article. > In OpenBSD there is a strict requirement that base builds base.
- raimue 9y ago
  I see it as part of portability that you do not need to use any external system for bootstrapping. Imagine as a developer who compiles base from source you had to find another system only to compile rustc and then transfer it to your machine. And you would not have to do this only once, but for every compiler bug fix coupled with the overall rapid evolution of Rust. I think many in the OpenBSD community would oppose such an approach, even without further considering other aspects such as security implications.
  - clort 9y ago
    This is the case IIRC with Android - even though I want to build it for a 32-bit ARM architecture, I can't build it on anything but 64-bit. I guess the vast majority of Android systems cannot even compile Android! https://source.android.com/setup/requirements https://source.android.com/setup/requirements
  - masklinn 9y ago
    > I see it as part of portability that you do not need to use any external system for bootstrapping. You always need an external system for bootstrapping, you're not assembling the base C compiler with which you're compiling everything else. At one point you need to obtain a compiler from somewhere else.
    - _jal 9y ago
      ...And the point is that the OpenBSD project has a policy of self-hosting. The bootstrap compiler for base (along with everything else needed to build base) must exist in base.
gerikson 9y ago
> OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware platforms, including machines with Alpha Can confirm, spent many happy hours hacking on an AlphaStation running OpenBSD!

by raimue 9y ago

masklinn 9y ago

> On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability They… don't need to? That rustc can't compile itself on i386 doesn't mean you can't ship a rustc for i386, it just means you have to cross-compile it.

_jal 9y ago
Addressed in the article. > In OpenBSD there is a strict requirement that base builds base.
raimue 9y ago
I see it as part of portability that you do not need to use any external system for bootstrapping. Imagine as a developer who compiles base from source you had to find another system only to compile rustc and then transfer it to your machine. And you would not have to do this only once, but for every compiler bug fix coupled with the overall rapid evolution of Rust. I think many in the OpenBSD community would oppose such an approach, even without further considering other aspects such as security implications.
- clort 9y ago
  This is the case IIRC with Android - even though I want to build it for a 32-bit ARM architecture, I can't build it on anything but 64-bit. I guess the vast majority of Android systems cannot even compile Android! https://source.android.com/setup/requirements https://source.android.com/setup/requirements
- masklinn 9y ago
  > I see it as part of portability that you do not need to use any external system for bootstrapping. You always need an external system for bootstrapping, you're not assembling the base C compiler with which you're compiling everything else. At one point you need to obtain a compiler from somewhere else.
  - _jal 9y ago
    ...And the point is that the OpenBSD project has a policy of self-hosting. The bootstrap compiler for base (along with everything else needed to build base) must exist in base.

gerikson 9y ago

> OpenBSD supports a wide variety of hardware platforms, including machines with Alpha Can confirm, spent many happy hours hacking on an AlphaStation running OpenBSD!