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Where are you getting the "vastly larger installed base"? On popcon riscv64 is a lot higher than sh4: https://popcon.debian.org/stat/submission-1year.png https:

by lambda 3y ago

Where are you getting the "vastly larger installed base"? On popcon riscv64 is a lot higher than sh4: https://popcon.debian.org/stat/submission-1year.png https://popcon.debian.org/stat/submission-1year.png There may be more hardware out there with SH4 processors, like some NAS boxes, but are they using or contributing to Debian? And when I look at a list of hardware with SuperH processors, half of the links are broken links: https://elinux.org/Processors#SuperH https://elinux.org/Processors#SuperH SuperH seems like a niche architecture mostly supported by a single vendor and available in a few devices mostly in the Japanese market, without a huge amount of use in the Debian community. RISC-V may not yet have as much extant hardware available, but there's tons of active development, and the open licensing model means that a lot of companies are working on RISC-V chips, which will then flow into hardware.

jeffbee 3y ago
I'm not suggesting that SuperH would become an official port today when it is clearly dead. But the question is why it was never an official port even when it was in its prime. As for the installed base, it is absolutely terrifyingly large. They had a lot of wins in automotive, and popular consumer products like Sonos are based on it, or were for the first decade of that product line, and those products also run Linux.
- cbmuser 3y ago
  > I'm not suggesting that SuperH would become an official port today when it is clearly dead. But the question is why it was never an official port even when it was in its prime. Because Renesas dropped the architecture and stopped paying developers maintaining it upstream. > As for the installed base, it is absolutely terrifyingly large. They had a lot of wins in automotive, and popular consumer products like Sonos are based on it, or were for the first decade of that product line, and those products also run Linux. That's true. But these systems were developed before Renesas stopped supporting the architecture.
- lambda 3y ago
  Even in its prime, it simply didn't have enough interest from Debian developers for maintaining an official port. With each release there are roll-call emails to help judge whether a port has sufficient maintenance to be included in the official release, and I generally see a single developer for SuperH/SH4: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00134.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00134.html There are a few more developers listed on the qualification page, but they don't seem to be responding to the roll-call messages: https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 Debian doesn't sit down and do market research on amount of hardware shipped, and then allocate developers and resources based on that; they base whether there's an official port on whether there are already enough developers and infrastructure to maintain it, as builds failing on that port can block work on packages. And besides the developers, the SH4 port had infrastructure issues, such as taking 6 days to build GCC: https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.htm... So the answer to "why wasn't SH4 an official port" is likely "there simply weren't enough developers and infrastructure for supporting it."
  - cbmuser 3y ago
    > There are a few more developers listed on the qualification page, but they don't seem to be responding to the roll-call messages: https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 I am one of these DDs and also official kernel maintainer of the SuperH port. I am not responding to such roll-call messages because there is no new SuperH hardware on the horizon at the moment except for the stalled J-Core project. > And besides the developers, the SH4 port had infrastructure issues, such as taking 6 days to build GCC: https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.htm... Well, the current RISC-V buildds also take days to build GCC. On the other hand, the 64-bit SPARC machines have been among the fastest in Debian, yet there is no official port. > So the answer to "why wasn't SH4 an official port" is likely "there simply weren't enough developers and infrastructure for supporting it." I would argue that the main reason is that Renesas simply abandoned the architecture and replaced it in their own applications with ARM. The prospective 64-bit SuperH port was dropped as well.

by lambda 3y ago

jeffbee 3y ago

I'm not suggesting that SuperH would become an official port today when it is clearly dead. But the question is why it was never an official port even when it was in its prime. As for the installed base, it is absolutely terrifyingly large. They had a lot of wins in automotive, and popular consumer products like Sonos are based on it, or were for the first decade of that product line, and those products also run Linux.

cbmuser 3y ago
> I'm not suggesting that SuperH would become an official port today when it is clearly dead. But the question is why it was never an official port even when it was in its prime. Because Renesas dropped the architecture and stopped paying developers maintaining it upstream. > As for the installed base, it is absolutely terrifyingly large. They had a lot of wins in automotive, and popular consumer products like Sonos are based on it, or were for the first decade of that product line, and those products also run Linux. That's true. But these systems were developed before Renesas stopped supporting the architecture.
lambda 3y ago
Even in its prime, it simply didn't have enough interest from Debian developers for maintaining an official port. With each release there are roll-call emails to help judge whether a port has sufficient maintenance to be included in the official release, and I generally see a single developer for SuperH/SH4: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00134.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00134.html There are a few more developers listed on the qualification page, but they don't seem to be responding to the roll-call messages: https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 Debian doesn't sit down and do market research on amount of hardware shipped, and then allocate developers and resources based on that; they base whether there's an official port on whether there are already enough developers and infrastructure to maintain it, as builds failing on that port can block work on packages. And besides the developers, the SH4 port had infrastructure issues, such as taking 6 days to build GCC: https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.htm... So the answer to "why wasn't SH4 an official port" is likely "there simply weren't enough developers and infrastructure for supporting it."
- cbmuser 3y ago
  > There are a few more developers listed on the qualification page, but they don't seem to be responding to the roll-call messages: https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 https://wiki.debian.org/ArchiveQualification/sh4 I am one of these DDs and also official kernel maintainer of the SuperH port. I am not responding to such roll-call messages because there is no new SuperH hardware on the horizon at the moment except for the stalled J-Core project. > And besides the developers, the SH4 port had infrastructure issues, such as taking 6 days to build GCC: https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2011/04/msg00173.htm... Well, the current RISC-V buildds also take days to build GCC. On the other hand, the 64-bit SPARC machines have been among the fastest in Debian, yet there is no official port. > So the answer to "why wasn't SH4 an official port" is likely "there simply weren't enough developers and infrastructure for supporting it." I would argue that the main reason is that Renesas simply abandoned the architecture and replaced it in their own applications with ARM. The prospective 64-bit SuperH port was dropped as well.