[blihp]

While I'm glad to see proprietary firmware both included and segregated in its own repo, I'm wondering why RISC-V wasn't added as a supported architecture in Debian 12? It seems like that supporting at least an open ISA would move closer to the possibility of what Debian wants to see happen... so why isn't it as a distro helping to make it happen?

[seba_dos1]

It's simple - because the port is not ready yet.

The plan is to have it ready for Debian 13: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/06/msg00...

[pabs3]

At the end of the day, this was because the hardware ecosystem (and the hardware support in Linux/bootloaders/etc) isn't really "ready" yet, and also there was slow and unclear communications between the porting team, the core Debian teams and one of the hosting providers. Eventually the teams provisionally approved the port, but after that the needed actions weren't done in time for the archive-wide rebuild that happens during the process of an unofficial port becoming official. I'm not on the porting team, but am on the Debian sysadmin team, and tried to speed up the process and make it more transparent. Debian contributors are mostly volunteers, so things take time.

[blihp]

Sorry for the lag in my reply (I just noticed your response)... I very much appreciate the info as I found the lack of official RISC-V support in 12 surprising. I hadn't read about the blockers to being ready for the release which makes perfect sense. Looking forward to seeing in in 13!

[teddyh]

https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V

[blihp]

That doesn't answer the question. It's still 'unofficial' per https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures

If you want the maintain the status quo you support the hardware that has the most users, if you want to change it you also support the hardware you want them to use.

[bayindirh]

In Debian, there's no single entity which decides on things. There are rules, and processes.

The relevant documentation is here: https://wiki.debian.org/PortsDocs/New

Also, the rules for becoming an official port is here: https://ftp-master.debian.org/archive-criteria.html

When RISC-V satisfies the relevant criteria, they can become official.

Also, maintaining a port is tremendous amount of work. Debian users only see the tip of the iceberg. There's so much beneath that.

[teddyh]

Who is the actor in this scenario who wants to change the status quo and therefore support the RISC-V platform in Debian? I.e. who are the people with the motivation to do that?

[blihp]

The Debian project has been historically a vocal proponent for open hardware/firmware/drivers etc. and here we are in 2023 having Debian somewhat controversially acknowledging that proprietary firmware may be required at least by some users, to some degree. So I am suggesting that if they really want to get there that they might need to help facilitate the change they would like to see.

Is RISC-V the be-all, end-all? No, but it could help them get a lot closer than they're likely to get with any of the proprietary ISAs.

[teddyh]

Debian is not a general advocacy organization. Debian produces the Debian GNU/Linux distribution, and that’s mostly it. The incentive to do the work necessary to add a new architecture to Debian must, in general, come from outside Debian itself. Debian will probably not, as a project, go around looking for new architectures to add. Debian depends on other people doing the work and presenting it to Debian, which will then distribute it if it is good enough. Debian will only have the motivation to work on including a new architecture if it is an obvious lacking feature of Debian – say, if every other Linux distributions supported an architecture, and it was widely used, but Debian did not support it, then the Debian project would have an incentive to work on it. But not before.

This is just like Debian generally does not write new useful software to put into Debian, and instead depend on outside, “upstream” authors to write software. Some other organizations, like FSF and its GNU project, will have advocacy roles, and do have the incentives to write new software and to help porting to new architectures. It is there that the motivations for this work must be found. Of course, individual people can be involved in more than one organization, and many Debian people happen to be enthusiastic advocates, and will in fact often do this work. But the reason for them doing this work is not, mostly, rooted in them being a part of Debian.

Therefore, and this is my point, if you want this work to be done, you can’t exhort Debian to do it. It will not work. Ask instead why someone else, whom you think should be motivated to do the work, does not do it.

[pabs3]

The RISC-V port of Debian was driven by internal Debian contributors, not by external actors. Similarly for Debian kFreeBSD and some other ports. OTOH, for LoongArch and ARC, those ports are driven almost entirely by the companies selling those chips. So I would say it is a mix.

[pabs3]

Even the open firmware that does exist has some major issues (like needing a proprietary compiler) or the hardware that it can run on it checks for Intel signatures, or only exists on archive.org, or is packaged in Debian but not properly built from source code, or exists but is only useful for obscure/ancient hardware that only people who want libre firmware buys, requires a forked compiler/toolchain to build, etc. Basically, open firmware is a hard problem and there aren't a lot of people with the skills and interest in doing it. I'm trying to at least document what exists on the wiki, anyone know of more projects?

https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open

[pjmlp]

RISC-V doesn't close the door on proprietary extensions.

[snvzz]

Proprietary extensions need to live in the opcode space reserved for custom extensions, where it'll overlap with other vendors' own custom extensions.

If they conflict with RISC-V's own space, the chip can't use RISC-V trademarks.

And, of course, the RISC-V Consortium will never adopt proprietary extensions, as that goes against its core values.