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> 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/Arch

> 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.

lambda 3y ago
Yeah, I was responding to the "why wasn't it ever official even when it was reasonably popular", not why it's not now. Those threads I linked to were from 10 years ago or more. I tried looking for any direct discussion in the past of making it an official architecture, and didn't find it, but I did find that it seems to have been slightly lower activity, and with some hurdles, and that there didn't seem to be much of a push to make it an official Debian architecture, while there's been active effort to make RISC-V an official architecture, that's been going on for several years. Anyhow, I'm not a DD or DM, I've made a few contributions via maintainers, so you're clearly more involved than I am. I was just trying to shed some light on the question of why SuperH never was official, and as far as I can tell it's because no one ever put enough effort in to make it official, while they have done so for RISC-V. But maybe I missed some drama somewhere.

lambda 3y ago

Yeah, I was responding to the "why wasn't it ever official even when it was reasonably popular", not why it's not now. Those threads I linked to were from 10 years ago or more. I tried looking for any direct discussion in the past of making it an official architecture, and didn't find it, but I did find that it seems to have been slightly lower activity, and with some hurdles, and that there didn't seem to be much of a push to make it an official Debian architecture, while there's been active effort to make RISC-V an official architecture, that's been going on for several years. Anyhow, I'm not a DD or DM, I've made a few contributions via maintainers, so you're clearly more involved than I am. I was just trying to shed some light on the question of why SuperH never was official, and as far as I can tell it's because no one ever put enough effort in to make it official, while they have done so for RISC-V. But maybe I missed some drama somewhere.