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Subject: Re: Archos devices: time to let them rest?

Re: Archos devices: time to let them rest?

From: Lorenzo Miori <memorys60_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 13:37:48 +0100

I already started having the same thoughts some weeks ago...
As you already mentioned we have new challenges (I would add native vs
hosted, touchscreen GUI etc)
Moreover I don't think that a 3.13 release for an archos is "outdated", the
main point is that the player is usable and new releases won't improve that
aspect at all.
Furthermore if any hacker is willing to resume the port in some other ways,
he is free to do so.
In conclusion yes, go ahead. I'm for a general code cleanup :)

Lorenzo
On 9 Feb 2014 13:08, "Frank Gevaerts" <frank_at_gevaerts.be> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> When rockbox started about twelve years ago, the Archos Jukebox was
> still a shiny new device, only slightly outclassed by the Recorder with
> its wonderful bitmap display.
>
> Rockbox pushed these devices far beyond what anyone could have imagined
> when they were released.
>
> Rockbox now runs on many more devices than these old Archoses, and with
> each new device, new challenges and opportunities arose. We now support
> colour screens, CPU decoding, touchscreens, and many features that were
> inspired by new and more powerful hardware.
>
> These newer devices are now vastly more popular than the Archoses, and
> this combined with the Archoses being different in some important ways
> (using a hardware codec, and for the Jukebox, using a character cell
> display) has meant that during the last few years Rockbox for the
> Archoses has not had the maintenance it really needs. This is e.g.
> visible on the build page [1], where you can see that the build for the
> Archos Recorder has been broken for more than a year, due to it (and
> soon, probably, some of its siblings) really needing to move to a
> different way of booting (a move the non-Archos ports made back when
> they started).
>
> The work needed to keep the Archos port alive is not impossible, but at
> least for the past two years, nobody has stepped up. We don't even know
> if anyone still has one of these devices in active use.
>
> I think it's now time to let the Archos port rest. Without it, rockbox
> would not have existed, but the way we treat it currently is not what it
> deserves. We don't want people to Rockbox on the Archoses as an
> annoyance that keeps breaking the build.
>
> Let us try to remember Rockbox on the Archos in its glory days, when it
> showed the world what a digital audio player could really do.
>
> I propose we let 3.13 be the last rockbox release that supports the old
> Archos devices, and that we won't try to force them into the 3.14
> release again.
>
> I also propose we stop auto-building the Archos ports right away, and
> that we consider any HWCODEC or CHARCELL code to be available for
> cleanup after 3.14 has been released (such cleanup can destabilise the
> code, and we want 3.14 out soon)
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Frank
>
> [1] http://build.rockbox.org/dev.cgi
>
> --
> "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
> Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
> by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan
>
Received on 2014-02-09

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