Re: ppc64le support in 9.3 branch?

Hi,

On 2018-03-23 14:54:46 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> So I see somebody at 2ndQ has set up a bunch of ppc64le buildfarm
> members, which I applaud. But they're all failing on the 9.3 branch,
> because we lack support for that architecture in that branch.
>
> Does anyone have the stomach for trying to add such support? The minimum
> requirement would be to back-patch 9.4's config.guess and config.sub,
> because that's where the builds are falling over right now. I wouldn't be
> too afraid of that, but what is not clear is what portability issues might
> be lurking beyond that. I could not find any specific mention of ppc64
> in the git changelogs, but that doesn't mean there weren't any other 9.4
> fixes that might need to be back-ported.
>
> It's hard to justify putting in very much effort to add new-platform
> support in a branch that's scheduled to die in six months, so I'm not
> sure what to do. Should we just tell 2ndQ not to bother running those
> animals on 9.3? Or should we make at least a bit of effort towards
> making it work?

> The compromise I'm inclined to offer is to see what happens if we
> back-patch 9.4's config.guess and config.sub. If that makes these
> animals go green, and doesn't break any others, we'll call it good.
> Otherwise, we revert that change and say we're not putting any
> additional effort into it.

I'm inclined to just ask them to stop running the animals on that
branch. There are no pre-existing users on 9.3 ppc64le, and new
customers hopefully won't move to 9.3. ISTM backpatching is riskier than
just changing a bunch of buildfarm configurations.

Greetings,

Andres Freund