I’m interested in getting RISC-V support into Flathub, as RISC-V appears to only be gaining traction as well as be a highly promising platform for PCs and servers alike. There has been no mention of it at all in the context of Flathub other than a generic goal to add support for it in 2023. Therefore, I’d like to know what the process might be to enable Flathub RISC-V support. I do know a real biggie is Buildbot infrastructure. There is an upcoming 64-core server board that you can pre order right now, but it’s $2000 for a complete package, although I happen to have ordered one already. Additionally, unless you pay out the nose for datacenter colocation, you have to either home host the server or use a Chinese cloud. Other than that, what else can I help with to get RISC-V support on the same level of x86 and aarch64 at Flathub?
I’m not actually affiliated with any RISC-V vendor in particular. However, I do want to get RISC-V to the same state as x86 and ARM, as not only does RISC-V show huge potential to be the “last” ISA, but it’s already viable for desktop usage. It seems like a lot of projects refuse to admit that it even exists, though, and I don’t want the same to happen to Flatpak/Flathub.
Without funding Flathub would likely not be able to procure and run their own infrastructure. If you want projects to adopt it you’ll likely need to find a sponsor that also wants to see this happen to fund or provide hardware to run builds on.
Debian right now has a fleet of 7 HiFive Unmatched boards, which were $1000 each. Multiply that by 7 and the total is $7000. However, each board needs some extra supporting accessories, so if each one is $1400 total then 7 is about $10K.
Since then, RISC-V has gotten a lot cheaper/faster for the same performance/price respectively, so here’s two potential scenarios.
The VisionFive 2 is the same or slightly faster than the Unmatched at around $100 each (VisionFive 2 — ameriDroid), and all you need extra is a MicroSD/eMMC/NVMe card and a USB-C power supply, so add $50 each for $150 total each. Getting the same Debian setup is therefore about $1000 which is downright cheap for what you’re getting.
The Milk-V Pioneer was $1200 for pre-order and $1500 for regular. However, the Pioneer Box includes all the supporting accessories for $2000 pre-order and $2500 regular. Just one of these monsters is approximately equivalent to 20 (?) VF2s, so it’s the same price/performance.
Therefore, it looks like a reasonable setup could be done for just a couple thousand dollars, which isn’t out of reach for a lot of people. Like in my original post, I have a Pioneer pre-ordered and potentially another reserved just for Flathub, so I’m willing to help out if needed.
I am awaiting of you actual contribution of “a reasonable setup could be done for just a couple thousand dollars, which isn’t out of reach for a lot of people” since it is within your reach.