[Docker-maint] Bug#844258: golang-go: go SIGILL on s390x

[Philipp Kern]

On 11/13/2016 09:55 PM, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> Filing this as promised and as previously discussed in #835360 [0]. It
> seems we're having problem building go packages on s390x when they end
> up on a certain buildd[1]. AIUI the issue boilds down to upstream go
> community doesn't define their support for s390 as we define the s390x
> port in Debian.  ie. they consider certain older s390 hardware
> unsupported which is still part of the defined hardware set of debian
> s390x. See for example [2].
> 
> I'd suggest simply removing s390x binaries and all reverse dependencies
> of golang on s390x. Also go package maintainers should limit their
> Architecture: field to only include archs that is actually supportable
> rather than using eg. 'all' like golang-github-shirou-gopsutil does
> despite including parsing code which only covers linux/x86* (and other
> archs we don't have in Debian).
> 
> Please note that I'm not really interested in being part of any
> discussion around this bug, so please feel free to leave me
> out of it! Thanks!

FWIW, we have now two of three builders and the porter box supporting
the s390x CPU feature set that Go requires.

I suppose the other way out could be that we decom zemlinsky (which
won't have a replacement). I know that Aurelien already had some patches
to Go, but not a complete set. Then the question is about the strategic
decision of having a language that is only supported on newer CPUs vs.
not building whatever is implemented in that language.

I suppose in the case of Go it's always feasible to also just download
it pre-compiled, set up your environment, and compile whatever you need.
Or download pre-compiled binaries of whatever you need. On the other
hand the major reason there was such an investment on Go on s390x is
that you can run docker and modern tools.

So personally I'd go and bite the bullet and document that Go is
available but won't work on anything less than a z196/z114 (released in
2010). :(

Kind regards
Philipp Kern