Promote RISC-V to an official architecture

[ilg-ul]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

Allow to get and install the node binaries from the main download pages, not from the unofficial section.

Indirectly this will allow to install node via nvm (the node version manager), which does not support unofficial builds (nvm-sh/nvm#3171 (comment))

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

Promote the RISC-V architecture to a prime citizen.

@sxa mentioned in #49278 (comment) that this should be possible, assuming someone is willing to help.

His main concern was the the lack of asm support in openssl, currently requiring --openssl-no-asm to pass the build.

I took a look at the openssl source files and I noticed that RISC-V asm support was added in 3.1.

In openssl/VERSION.dat I see that the current version in use is 3.0.10.

Would it be possible to upgrade the node dependencies to 3.1.2? (Unfortunately I'm not familiar with your build system to do this myself).

Once this is done, we can further test if the RISC-V build passes without --openssl-no-asm.

What alternatives have you considered?

No response

[bnoordhuis]

Would it be possible to upgrade the node dependencies to 3.1.2?

No. The 3.1 branch is not LTS, like 3.0 is. From https://www.openssl.org/policies/releasestrat.html:

• Version 3.1 will be supported until 2025-03-14
• Version 3.0 will be supported until 2026-09-07 (LTS)

Node v20.x's EOL is in April 2026.

[ilg-ul]

If openssl 3.1 is out of reach, could we accept that, for now, on RISC-V, openssl will be compiled without asm support?

[bnoordhuis]

I personally don't have a problem with that. Users are likely going to take note of the (lack of) performance of TLS and cryptography in general though.

[ilg-ul]

... Users are likely going to take note of the (lack of) performance

Right. But we can mention in the release notes that this is a temporary solution until RISC-V support in openssl will mature.

In this case, what would be the next steps to make this happen?

[bnoordhuis]

Check the "supported platforms" section in BUILDING.md. You basically want to get riscv to (at least) tier 2, meaning there needs to be CI infrastructure and one or more people maintaining it (where "it" is both the infrastructure and the state of the test suite.)

That's to get to tier 2. To stay there is an ongoing commitment, and not of the "check in once a month" kind.

[ilg-ul]

Check the "supported platforms" section in BUILDING.md.

Thank you, that's a good starting point.

Do you know what infrastructure is used to build and publish the unofficial RISC-V binaries?

[bnoordhuis]

I'm not 100% sure but I expect @sxa builds and uploads them locally, no CI involved.

[bnoordhuis]

It's been a month with no movement. I'll take the liberty of closing this but LMK if there is reason to reopen.

[targos]

Discussion is happening on #42251 and nodejs/build#2876

[sxa]

Missed these comments - thanks for closing this issue which is pretty much a dupliate and it's best to avoid fragmented comment threads, but to give closure on a couple of explicit questions above:

If openssl 3.1 is out of reach, could we accept that, for now, on RISC-V, openssl will be compiled without asm support?

That's what's happening in the unofficial builds currently. So it works, but likely not quick, although that may be the cause of some of the test case failures.

Do you know what infrastructure is used to build and publish the unofficial RISC-V binaries?

It's the same x64 host used for all of the linux unofficial builds so it's done with a GCC cross-compiler which is outside the noraml node.js CI as @bnoordhuis asserted. I don't do anything locally for them

As per @targos' comment, let's have any follow-on discussion in one of the other issues.