LibreOffice architecture support (was: Fwd: Plan to remove dead C++ UNO bridge implementations (bridges/source/cpp_uno/*))

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Stephan!

On 1/12/23 10:48, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 10/01/2023 19:57, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> Hi Stephan!
>>
>>> There are currently 27 different, per-platform C++ UNO bridge implementations at
>>> bridges/source/cpp_uno/, some of which are presumably dead by now. And my recent
>>> <https://git.libreoffice.org/core/+/ef533553559fe09b4afab651fc692885d1acf4ed%5E!/>
>>> "Rudimentary support for dynamic_cast on UNO proxy objects" (which had to touch
>>> each of them individually) was the latest example how even presumably dead ones
>>> have ongoing maintenance cost. Therefore, I would like to remove (on master,
>>> towards LO 7.6) the ones that can clearly be identified as being dead.
>>>
>>> Below, I sorted those 27 implementations into 5 categories: Ideally, each active
>>> implementation would be built regularly by Jenkins; those 9 that are go into category
>>> 1. Next, there are 2 additional implementations that I know are built for Fedora
>>> releases; they go into category 2. Next, there are 2 additional implementations
>>> that I presume are built for Debian releases (Rene, correct me if I'm wrong);
>>> they go into category 3. And then there are 3 implementations that are presumably
>>> in active use elsewhere (Tor, wjh-la, Sakura286, correct me if I'm wrong); which
>>> go into category 4. That leaves 11 implementations that are presumably dead, in
>>> category 5.
>>
>>> (5) Presumably dead:
> [...]
>>> * gcc3_solaris_intel
>>> * gcc3_solaris_sparc
>>
>> Oracle is still maintaining Solaris until at least 2035 and OpenIndiana is still maintained, too.
>>
>> According to this article, LibreOffice 7.2.7 was shipped with OpenIndiana 2022.10:
>>
>>> https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/07/new_version_of_openindiana/
>>
>> So, I'm not sure dropping Solaris support is a good idea either.
> 
> Thanks for that link.
> 
>  From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIndiana> it looks like at least OpenIndiana only supports x86-64, so neither gcc3_solar_intel (32-bit x86) nor gcc3_solaris_sparc (32-bit SPARC) should be relevant for it. I'm adding Andreas Wacknitz (who's the author of recent OpenIndiana announcements like <https://www.openindiana.org/2022/12/04/openindiana-hipster-2022-10-is-here/>) in CC, maybe he can shed some light on this.  (Andreas, my full original email starting this thread is at <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2023-January/089808.html> "Plan to remove dead C++ UNO bridge implementations (bridges/source/cpp_uno/*)").
> 
> I don't know if there are any other Solaris-based offerings for which current LO master gcc3_solaris_intel and/or gcc3_solar_sparc would still be relevant.  If somebody knows of any, please report back here.

I'm adding two of the Solaris maintainers at Oracle that I know to ask them whether
the SPARC port for LibreOffice is still relevant for them.

Adrian

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