Re: sun2 and playstation2 ports to be moved into Attic

[Antti Kantee <pooka%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Fri Nov 13 2009 at 06:36:31 +0900, Izumi Tsutsui wrote:
> > > > The sun2 and playstation2 ports have been neglected for a long time and
> > > > neither has successfully completed an installation in recent history.
> > > 
> > > What's the problem on sun2? Is there any such PR?
> > 
> > There was no portmaster.
> 
> sparc has own MACHINE_ARCH and no portmaster.
> What do you think about it?

sparc has users (well, at least one: me).  Honestly speaking, you are
the only sun2 user I've heard of, and I did try asking around before
posting the email.

Theoretically speaking, if it came down to removing sparc, I'd just use an
older release of NetBSD instead of stepping up as maintainer, but in this
project everyone is of course free to spend their time as they choose.

> My point is buildable state can't be a reason for removal,
> and in sun2 case I don't think it's MACHINE_ARCH specific.

No, but usable state is.  As the story goes, a certain person made an
effort to get sun2 to build (and said he succeeded), but he ever got
around to making it work in the emulator.  We did not have any data on
if sun2 actually worked.

> > If you are interested in the position, please
> > take over.
> 
> If you really think it's worth to assign a pseudo portmaster
> just for a placeholder like other many ports, please do.

The point is to have someone step up and maintain the port.  If you're
going to maintain it just on paper, we might as well give up now.
People I've spoken to aren't very interested in editing sun2 release
notes, requiring the occasional edits to keep up with MACHINE_ARCH
changes etc.  If someone wants to keep it up to speed with MI changes,
I'm sure nobody will mind having sun2 around.