Breaking-Change-Request: intent to remove ARMv5 support in Dart VM

[mraleph]

We intend to remove ARMv5 support in the VM, changing lowest supported version to ARMv6.

Rationale

ARMv5 does not seem to have any users, is not tested on bots and is not well maintained (most likely broken by this point).

The expected impact of this change.

Dart VM no longer work on ARMv5 devices.

Mitigation

None available.

[aadilmaan]

Announce email sent. Approvals pending.

@Hixie @matanlurey @dgrove - Please review and approve.

[dgrove]

Approved.

[aadilmaan]

Waiting on @Hixie and @matanlurey approvals.

[Hixie]

cc @eseidelGoogle @cbracken @timsneath Do we claim to support ARMv5?

[timsneath]

As best I can tell, ARMv5 is very dead: as in, unsupported by modern Android. It dates back to Android 2.3, and if I've read right, is unsupported in Jelly Bean and onward (which are the platforms we support https://flutter.dev/docs/resources/faq#what-devices-and-os-versions-does-flutter-run-on). I only see mention in our own docs of ARMv7.

From random internet links:

• NDK r17 includes the Neural Network API, JNI Shared Memory API, Rootless ASAN, and support for UBSAN. It removes support for ARMv5, MIPS, and MIPS64. NDK r18 will remove gcc support, instead you must use clang.

• -

  armeabi — ARMv5/6 are old architectures that haven’t been used in years, since Android 2.3, and due to limitations of architecture, PSPDFKit rendering was just too slow to be usable. This is why we don’t ship this architecture at all. All new devices (Android 4.0 or newer) support at least ARMv7 architecture with NEON. Support for armeabi was removed within the NDK 17.

On Sun, Apr 21, 2019 at 11:15 AM Ian Hickson notifications@github.com wrote:

cc @eseidelGoogle https://github.com/eseidelGoogle @cbracken https://github.com/cbracken @timsneath https://github.com/timsneath Do we claim to support ARMv5?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/issues/36666#issuecomment-485271686, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AARWL67FAJIZSJMFZAQSYIDPRSVNNANCNFSM4HG3TMXA .

[cbracken]

This is correct. We don’t claim to support ARMv5; no issues removing this from my side.

[aadilmaan]

@Hixie @matanlurey Any additional concerns or questions for this request?

[Hixie]

sgtm

[aadilmaan]

Waiting on @matanlurey for final approval.

[dgrove]

This won't impact @matanlurey. This request is fully approved as of now.

On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 2:04 PM Aadil Maan notifications@github.com wrote:

Waiting on @matanlurey https://github.com/matanlurey for final approval.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/dart-lang/sdk/issues/36666#issuecomment-489365481, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAQCYW5AYJ73KAJ5USFXV33PTX27FANCNFSM4HG3TMXA .

[matanlurey]

Feel free to skip me for anything that won't impact the web or google3. LGTM tho.

[aadilmaan]

Roger that. Assigning back to Vyacheslav.

[mit-mit]

@mkustermann was this removed?

[mkustermann]

@mkustermann was this removed?

Here's a CL that removes the remaining code: cl/122540