GHC HQ are looking for a Linux-IA64 box

[Julian Seward (Intl Vendor)]

[Apologies if you get multiple copies of this msg.]

Folks,

Following a recent discussion about future development directions
for GHC, it seems one thing we want to start thinking about is
support for the IA64 architecture.

Does any kind person have an IA64 box, running Linux, on which we could
have an account?  The extent of the work would be to make GHC's
runtime-support system work again on a 64-bit platform (it used to),
and possibly to build an IA64 native code generator.  This work would
be spread across a couple of months, I imagine.

Basic requirements are:

* IA64 Linux box, with development tools (gcc, perl, autoconf, gdb,
  etc -- all the usual Linux/Unix stuff).

* As many spare processor cycles as possible.  GHC building/debugging
  tends to CPU intensive.  Also, probably at least 256MB of memory would

  be necessary to keep us out of trouble.

* At a bare minimum, 300 MB of free disk space; 1 GB would be
  preferable, since it would allow more thorough testing of the
  system.

* Decent, permanent, reliable internet connection from so that we can=20
  work remotely (obviously) and so that we can talk to our CVS server.
  I'd say at a bare minimum a 128 kb/sec connection.  Preferably
  as few as possible network hops from Cambridge, UK.

This work is likely to be on-and-off (not all the time) over a couple
of months, I'd guess.  We probably won't be ready to start on it for=20
at least a month, so some time around the start of May would be when=20
we'd really want to start moving on this.

Availability of such a machine would be a useful contribution to
the GHC development effort, so we'd be grateful if any of you could
point us in the right direction.

J

(speaking for the GHC crew as a whole)