thesamesam/gist:418ad675abe532b5f25f13af15f81635

## gistfile1.txt
Hi all,

TL;DR: We really need help! There aren't many developers in Gentoo
interested in working on Itanium. Come hang around in #gentoo-ia64
on libera.chat (IRC) if you're interested in helping.

As discussed in the recent Gentoo Council meeting [0], concerns were raised
about the status of Itanium (IA64) and I agreed to write to gentoo-dev to
assess the level of interest & put out a call for volunteers.

What we need from voluntees is at least one of the following:
- Package testers to perform "keywording" (verifying a package compiles and ideally
passes tests on IA64)
- An advocate for the arch/port (it's hard to be motivated for
something not working unless we know _someone_ out there is affected
or cares)
- Possibly general work on reporting bugs upstream, triaging failures,
and even trying to fix them where possible (but it's okay to not
be an expert in IA64 internals).
- Folks simply using IA64 on Gentoo to let us know!
- Anything else if you think it'd help the port effort.

There were rumours of GCC support being deprecated (and subsequent
removal) [2][3] but this does NOT appear to have happened so far [4].

It might be worth a volunteer could investigate setting up
CI for GCC upstream (and possibly glibc if they need it).

Gentoo does have a machine ("guppy") for performing development
work on, but we need people to actually use it.

(This is a good time to note that friends and users of "alternative
hardware" are welcome to join e.g. #gentoo-ia64, #gentoo-alpha,
#gentoo-arm, #gentoo-hppa, #gentoo-sparc, and #gentoo-embedded too!)

[0] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20220109-summary.txt
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/s0emlj/trying_to_boot_latest_ia64_release/
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-IA-64-GCC-Deprecation
[3] https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2019-06/msg00125.html
[4] https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=commit&s=ia64

best,
sam
	Hi all,

	TL;DR: We really need help! There aren't many developers in Gentoo
	interested in working on Itanium. Come hang around in #gentoo-ia64
	on libera.chat (IRC) if you're interested in helping.

	As discussed in the recent Gentoo Council meeting [0], concerns were raised
	about the status of Itanium (IA64) and I agreed to write to gentoo-dev to
	assess the level of interest & put out a call for volunteers.

	What we need from voluntees is at least one of the following:
	- Package testers to perform "keywording" (verifying a package compiles and ideally
	passes tests on IA64)
	- An advocate for the arch/port (it's hard to be motivated for
	something not working unless we know _someone_ out there is affected
	or cares)
	- Possibly general work on reporting bugs upstream, triaging failures,
	and even trying to fix them where possible (but it's okay to not
	be an expert in IA64 internals).
	- Folks simply using IA64 on Gentoo to let us know!
	- Anything else if you think it'd help the port effort.

	There were rumours of GCC support being deprecated (and subsequent
	removal) [2][3] but this does NOT appear to have happened so far [4].

	It might be worth a volunteer could investigate setting up
	CI for GCC upstream (and possibly glibc if they need it).

	Gentoo does have a machine ("guppy") for performing development
	work on, but we need people to actually use it.

	(This is a good time to note that friends and users of "alternative
	hardware" are welcome to join e.g. #gentoo-ia64, #gentoo-alpha,
	#gentoo-arm, #gentoo-hppa, #gentoo-sparc, and #gentoo-embedded too!)

	[0] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20220109-summary.txt
	[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Gentoo/comments/s0emlj/trying_to_boot_latest_ia64_release/
	[2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-IA-64-GCC-Deprecation
	[3] https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2019-06/msg00125.html
	[4] https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=commit&s=ia64

	best,
	sam