We have started the process of dropping the armhf architecture from postmarketOS. Starting today:
- No more packages will be built for
armhf - No more cross-compilers to
armhfwill be available in repositories - Device ports that target
armhfhave been archived due to lack of maintenance
To clear up any confusion: the armhf architecture in Alpine and postmarketOS targets ARMv6 CPUs with an FPU. ARMv7 CPUs are not in scope for armhf, which are supported by the armv7 architecture in Alpine and postmarketOS. This means armv7 devices (such as the Nokia N900, Samsung Galaxy S III, etc) are not affected by this change and will continue to be supported.
Why drop armhf?
The armhf architecture is overall not very well supported, Alpine Linux has been considering dropping it multiple times in the past, and it has been a considerable amount of work for us to maintain support for this architecture, which doesn't make sense if there are very few users (if any) to justify the effort, as very few devices in postmarketOS were armhf devices to begin with (only 26 armhf devices were supported, of which 24 were actually armv7 devices, or even aarch64, and only one of them was in the testing category).