Status of FreeBSD ports on PowerPC

This page mostly focuses on the status of ports on 64-bit PowerPC in big-endian mode (known internal to the code as 'powerpc64') as opposed to 32-bit PowerPC.

Port support for FreeBSD/powerpc64 is an active work in progress. Only moderate testing has been done. Consider it an opportunity!

Overview

Most comments in this file apply to ports built using either compiler. Exceptions are called out explicitly.

Official package repository availability

Platform

11.5

12.2

13.0

powerpc

no

no

no

powerpcspe

no

no

no

powerpc64

no

yes

yes

powerpc64le

no

no

no

Buildable ports

Ports buildable on GCC-based systems

See powerpc/ports/PortsOnGcc.

Almost all ports do build via GCC. Pre-built packages are available for 12-STABLE via the usual methods. At the momemnt, only the quarterly branch is built for 12-STABLE.

However, as powerpc64 is a tier-2 platform in FreeBSD, ports are not at parity with e.g. amd64; there are still a number of ports ignored, skipped, and failing to build. We have several volunteers working on the problem but more are needed, especially in the area of testing.

Please contact MarkLinimon if you want to help and/or to see the error log from the last time any of the failing ports was attempted.

Ports buildable on llvm-based systems

Ports on 13-STABLE switched to llvm in base. See powerpc/ports/PortsOnClang.

Ports that need patches to build

These comments are common to both GCC-based and llvm-based systems.

Non-buildable ports

These comments are common to both GCC-based and llvm-based systems.

Build failures in need of most attention

/!\ as of 20210128 on pylon, glib20 fails. The statistics below do not reflect this.

We are actively working to resolve these.

miscellaneous known failures

This list is not comprehensive. Does not include things marked BROKEN or NOT_FOR.

Roughly sorted by # affected, descending. #affected may reflect a partial build.

Updated 20210128.

Portname

# Affected

Affects

Error

Comments

www/qt5-webengine

83

KDE

fails to package

lang/ghc

53

Haskell ports

linker_error

ssl problems

In 12 and later, there are over 100 port regressions based on ssl. These affect all archs and most are out of scope of this discussion. Almost all are already marked BROKEN, on all architectures.

clang11 problems

In 13 and later, there are over 100. These mostly show up as duplicate symbol. They are not specific to powerpc, and are being marked BROKEN as of 20210128.

ports already marked BROKEN

There are around 39 ports marked BROKEN specifically on powerpc64. These are ports that we believe could possibly be fixed on FreeBSD (as opposed to NOT_FOR_ARCHS/ONLY_FOR_ARCHS where we believe that upstream would have to make changes).

Runs with TRYBROKEN set are periodically made to check that they still fail.

/!\ TRYBROKEN builds do not include things marked NOT_FOR/ONLY_FOR. Those have to be manually edited and forced.

ports not available for powerpc64 (yet) via NOT_FOR/ONLY_FOR/BROKEN

Here is the list of most notable ports. This list is not comprehensive; some of the more obscure ports are omitted..

Roughly sorted by # affected, descending. #affected may reflect a partial build.

Updated 20210128.

Portname

# Affected

Affects

Error

Comments

lang/go

375

Go language apps

go tool dist: unknown architecture: powerpc

marked NOT_FOR

emulators/linux_base-c7

183

linux*

Linux CentOS 6.10 is unsupported on powerpc64

marked NOT_FOR

lang/fpc

101

Pascal language apps

(port Makefile not configured for !x86)

marked NOT_FOR

lang/gnustep-base

120

gnustep

(fixed on ELFv2)

sysutils/u-boot-tools

55

arm board support

include/config_distro_bootcmd.h:279:3: sandbox EFI support is only supported on ARM and x86

marked BROKEN

lang/gcc6-aux

39

Ada language

is only for aarch64 amd64 i386

marked NOT_FOR

lang/ldc

24

dtrace

unrecognized command line option

marked BROKEN

lang/mono

13

C# apps

is only for amd64 armv6 armv7 i386 powerpc

marked NOT_FOR; work in progress 20200609

lang/sbcl

11

Common Lisp apps

is only for amd64 i386

marked NOT_FOR

www/chromium

10

is only for aarch64 amd64 i386

marked NOT_FOR

Notes

Repositories

See /repositories.


CategoryPorts CategoryTodo CategoryStale

powerpc/ports (last edited 2023-12-17T23:47:20+0000 by MarkLinimon)