F42 Change Proposal: Stop building Flatpaks for PPC64LE (self-contained)

Project Discussion Change Proposals
,
1

Stop building Flatpaks for PPC64LE

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Wiki
Announced

:link: Summary

We will stop building the Fedora Flatpak runtimes and applications for the PowerPC 64 LE architecture.

Users of Flatpaks on ppc64le will have to switch back to the corresponding Fedora RPM package.

:link: Owner

:link: Detailed Description

Flatpaks were enabled for ppc64le as of Fedora 39 because the Atomic Desktops were available thereon and were going to include flatpak versions of applications in their ISOs rather than as RPMs inside of the ostree. (Fedora 39 was also the first version where building flatpaks for ppc64le was feasible, as previous versions relied on different tooling which used OSBS to build images.) However, flatpak builds on ppc64le have been consistently slower than x86_64 and aarch64, and a significant number of applications cannot be built on ppc64le (for example, anything based on QtWebEngine).

With Atomic Desktops for ppc64le being proposed for removal in a separate Change, and extremely few overall users of any desktop variants on this architecture (per discussion on said change), there would appear to be no further need for Flatpaks to be built for ppc64le either.

:link: Feedback

None so far.

:link: Benefit to Fedora

Not building for ppc64le means faster builds, less infrastructure load, and less maintenance. We can focus on the architectures where hardware is more easily available and where we have a lot of users already (i.e. x86_64 and aarch64).

:link: Scope

  • Proposal owners: Remove the ppc64le architecture from flatpak-runtime-scripts, and create PRs for releng changes.
  • Other developers: N/A
  • Release engineering: #12517
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: N/A

:link: Upgrade/compatibility impact

Users of Flatpaks on ppc64le will have to switch back to installing the RPM in a package mode installation, or adding packages to their own images using Bootable Containers which are available for ppc64le.

Note that this change is only about the Flatpak runtime and application images and thus all the RPM packages will still be available.

:link: Early Testing (Optional)

N/A

:link: How To Test

N/A

:link: User Experience

N/A

:link: Dependencies

Changes/AtomicDesktopsNoPpc64le

:link: Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) No change will be made, and Flatpaks will continue to be built for ppc64le.
  • Contingency deadline: Final freeze
  • Blocks release? No

:link: Documentation

Fedora Flatpaks are no longer built for the PowerPC 64 LE architecture.

:link: Release Notes

Fedora Flatpaks are no longer built for the PowerPC 64 LE architecture.

Last edited by @amoloney 2025-01-10T18:44:44Z

Last edited by @amoloney 2025-01-10T18:44:44Z

1 Like
2

How do you feel about the proposal as written?

  • Strongly in favor
  • In favor, with reservations
  • Neutral
  • Opposed, but could be convinced
  • Strongly opposed
0 voters

If you are in favor but have reservations, or are opposed but something could change your mind, please explain in a reply.

We want everyone to be heard, but many posts repeating the same thing actually makes that harder. If you have something new to say, please say it. If, instead, you find someone has already covered what you’d like to express, please simply give that post a :heart: instead of reiterating. You can even do this by email, by replying with the heart emoji or just “+1”. This will make long topics easier to follow.

Please note that this is an advisory “straw poll” meant to gauge sentiment. It isn’t a vote or a scientific survey. See About the Change Proposals category for more about the Change Process and moderation policy.

3

@ngompa you mentioned some changes coming soon that may affect some of the justifications for this?

4

There’s been some efforts to improve POWER builders (@kevin implemented changes to storage, and @blc assures me that he’s going to look into making the builders better later this year).

Additionally, the blocker around KDE applications on PowerPC should be resolving itself as we integrate the ppc64le support patches for QtWebEngine into our qt6-qtwebengine package.

5

Fixing those two issues would go a long way to resolving my concerns. But ultimately is there demand?

2 Likes
6

This change proposal has now been submitted to FESCo with ticket #3340 for voting.

To find out more, please visit our Changes Policy documentation.