Deprecate MIPSEL

[kallisti5]

Jonas mentioned on haiku-commits that mipsel could go away. He lost interest in it and wanted to be placed into past maintainers.

As there isn't much mips hardware out there that is useful in any way anymore (even as a toy), we may want to remove support for it.

Topics:

1. Remove mipsel from buildbot scripts
2. Remove mipsel from haiku code
3. Remote mipsel from trac

[kallisti5]

Original email: ​http://www.freelists.org/post/haiku-commits/haiku-hrev46845-buildscripts,2

I'm assigning this to mmadia first as he would be the one to remove the mipsel build from buildbot (topic 1)

[kallisti5]

mipsel was removed from buildbot scripts and haiku code.. removing from trac.

[kallisti5]

actually... I don't have permissions for arch management. Could someone drop mipsel from trac?

[umccullough]

It was defined in trac.ini on the server. I have now removed mipsel from the list.

[haiqu]

As a proud - if metaphorical - proponent of antidisestablishmentarianism I have to protest this blatant floccinaucinihilipilification. There are many examples of viable mips platforms using the PIC32MX and MZ chips. These include:

• chipKIT Max32 board, with Arduino Ethernet shield R3 or chipKIT WiFi shield.
• Sparkfun UBW32 board, with SD card socket.
• Maximite computer. ​http://geoffg.net/MonoMaximite.html
• Microchip Explorer 16 board, with PIC32 CAN-USB plug-in module and SD & MMC pictail.
• Microchip PIC32 USB or Ethernet Starter Kit, with I/O Expansion board and SD & MMC pictail.
• Olimex Duinomite, Duinomite-Mini, Duinomite-Mega and Duinomite-eMega boards.
• Olimex Pinguino-Micro board with PIC32MX795F512H microcontroller.
• eflightworks DIP board with micro-SD socket.
• CGMMSTICK1 board.
• Fubarino SD board with PIC32MX795F512H microcontroller.
• MikroElektronika multimedia board for PIC32MX7.
• Dimitech DTX2-4105C module in a PLCC-68 format.

While losing an active maintainer for the port tends to leave it in disarray others may want to continue the work, even if only due to an interest in hacking microcontrollers.

And if anyone has doubt that the above platforms can support an operating system, they should know that I ported RetroBSD (2.11 BSD) to the Maximite about four years ago using Microchip's MPLAB under Windoze.

[kallisti5]

Patches welcome as long as they get Haiku running on a MIPS platform.

[cb88]

@haiqu PIC32 is not an appropriate target for Haiku it is an embedded microcontroller that just so happens to be MIPS.

On the other hand this would be a valid target and probably isn't too different from ARM anyway. ​http://www.elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20

[richienyhus]

Agreed, the Creator CI20 is the only valid MIPS target right now. ​https://www.imgtec.com/creator

[haiqu]

kallisti5: You'll like that I recently fixed the cross-compiler build then. Jonas' work seems to be mainly skeleton code so it's an open platform atm. I plan to at least port to the Maximite (monochrome version) ​http://geoffg.net/MonoMaximite.html which I already own. May require forking the code to make a "lite" version of Haiku for low-powered micros, but then it will also become useful for other targets. A personal favourite is the TI MSP430 family which I've used extensively.

cb88, richienyhus: The CI20 looks like a really nice platform, if a bit short of USB ports. Might have to wait until next month though, I just bought a Pi2 for the Arm port. :-)