PEP 11: Tier 3 support for riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu target triple #360

I'd like to propose Tier 3 platform support for the riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu target triple (Linux running on a 64-bit RISC-V system).

It currently meets PEP 11's minimum requirement of one stable Buildbot, as in fact we currently have three stable Buildbots:

• riscv64 Ubuntu (kindly provided and maintained by @furkanonder
• RISC-V 64-bit Ubuntu Clang
• RISC-V 64-bit Ubuntu

and one (semi-)stable free-threading Buildbot:

• RISC-V 64-bit Ubuntu NoGIL

And for the second requirement, I am volunteering to be the core developer supporting this platform. Although perhaps some others will want to join me. ;-)

While the architecture has relatively little usage compared to alternatives, there are many large ongoing investments in RISC-V. It is already supported by various toolchains, including GCC and LLVM; platforms such as Linux and various BSDs; QEMU, which is useful for development; and languages such as Rust and Go, as well as experimentally by Julia. Python packaging support is also available (see the Discourse thread), and uv also supports the platform.

Linux distributions already build and ship Python on RISC-V, including Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Alpine. Additionally, prebuilt binary wheels for 64-bit RISC-V also already exist for CPython; see wheel_builder.

This work is supported by RISE (RISC-V Software Ecosystem), which aims to accelerate the development of open source software support for the RISC-V architecture. They have provided three of our Buildbots, as well as additional machines. They are also offering more support, including additional Buildbot machines, GitHub Actions runners, expert support, and even contract work (perhaps JIT support or performance improvements in the future?!).

I have a RISC-V machine available for testing and development. Please send me an SSH key if you'd like access. :-)