Developers of the Debian announced the removal of the port for architecture mipsel from the Unstable/Experimental repositories. Mipsel was one of the oldest supported ports of Debian, even older than the port for I386 processors. It is anticipated that Debian 12 will mark the final release with MIPSEL support. However, it is important to note that the change will not affect the MIPS64 architecture, as it will continue to be supported.
The decision to terminate support for mipsel is justified by several technical issues as mentioned by the Debian community:
- Restrictions on memory size within the user space, limited to 2GB.
- The architecture is susceptible to the 2038 problem, which refers to the limited 32-bit Time_T. Any correction in this matter would break the ABI and necessitate a complete overhaul of the system, resulting in the loss of compatibility with binary programs.
- Lack of powerful equipment based on the Mipsel architecture for system assembly.
- Assembly issues for Mipsel architecture in certain packages.
- Modern tools typically employ a different NAN representation for floating-point operations. Addressing this aspect would require a complete overhaul, leading to the loss of compatibility with existing binary programs.
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