People are still using i386? I'd assume even if they are, it's such a tiny minority that it shouldn't be an excuse to hold everyone else back.
If rustc cannot even build itself on i386, what kind of support can we expect for other platforms with an even smaller user base?
On a project such as OpenBSD they cannot suddenly drop platforms and only support amd64 as portability is one of their main "selling" points. Furthermore, that would also mean to lose the developers that are interested in these alternative platforms and probably chose OpenBSD because of the platform support. Furthermore, such developers are usually not only contributing to platform-specific parts, but also to system utilities and ports.
For the full list of platforms, see https://www.openbsd.org/plat.html
They… don't need to? That rustc can't compile itself on i386 doesn't mean you can't ship a rustc for i386, it just means you have to cross-compile it.
> In OpenBSD there is a strict requirement that base builds base.
Imagine as a developer who compiles base from source you had to find another system only to compile rustc and then transfer it to your machine. And you would not have to do this only once, but for every compiler bug fix coupled with the overall rapid evolution of Rust. I think many in the OpenBSD community would oppose such an approach, even without further considering other aspects such as security implications.
You always need an external system for bootstrapping, you're not assembling the base C compiler with which you're compiling everything else. At one point you need to obtain a compiler from somewhere else.
Can confirm, spent many happy hours hacking on an AlphaStation running OpenBSD!
i386 might not be as popular as it was on 'normal' OS, but I wouldn't be surprised if OpenBSD had a lot of people still using it.
I'm a big fan of what Rust promises, but the solution is not that OpenBSD changes its policies or that OpenBSD drops i386. Rust should become self hosting on i386.
These aren’t just philosophical comments, the implications for him and OBSD devs is to spend massive time developing these things. Dropping a supported platform and taking on a huge investment of effort needs serious justification.
I've seen i386 multiple times to also refer to any x86 Arch.
> All CPUs compatible with the Intel 80486 or better,[0]
$ uname -a
OpenBSD hostname 5.9 GENERIC.MP#6 i386