[BUG] - cardano-node failing to build on ppc64 (OpenPOWER)

[camberkenpas]

Internal/External
External

Area
Other Any other topic (Delegation, Ranking, ...).

Summary
cardano-node failing to build on ppc64:
: error:
loadArchive "/usr/local/lib/libblst.a": failed
[156 of 188] Compiling UntypedPlutusCore.Evaluation.Machine.Cek.CekMachineCosts ( untyped-plutus-core/src/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/CekMachineCosts.hs, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/CekMachineCosts.o, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/CekMachineCosts.dyn_o )
[158 of 188] Compiling UntypedPlutusCore.Evaluation.Machine.Cek.StepCounter ( untyped-plutus-core/src/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/StepCounter.hs, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/StepCounter.o, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Evaluation/Machine/Cek/StepCounter.dyn_o )
[175 of 188] Compiling UntypedPlutusCore.Simplify.Opts ( untyped-plutus-core/src/UntypedPlutusCore/Simplify/Opts.hs, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Simplify/Opts.o, dist/build/UntypedPlutusCore/Simplify/Opts.dyn_o )
ghc-9.4.7: /usr/local/lib/libblst.a: RTS linker not implemented on PowerPC 64-bit

That's a portion of the error output where all the errors are complaining about libblst.a, but if the build were to go on longer, we could potentially see similar errors for other dependencies such as secp256k1 and libsodium I would assume.

Steps to reproduce
Followed the steps here
Everything works up until:
cabal build cardano-cli

Expected behavior
This should complete sucessfully:
cabal build cardano-cli

System info (please complete the following information):

• OS Name: Ubuntu
• OS Version: 24.04
• Node version attempting to build 10.1.2
• CLI version attempt to build 10.1.2
• ghc version: 9.4.7

Additional context
Even in the latest GHC there is no dynamic linking in the Haskell interpreter for ppc64. This is a ghc/Haskell problem (including in the latest master) that could potentially be worked around on the Cardano side for better compatibility. Possibly by avoiding Template Haskell?

The same limitation in Haskell exists for s390 and RISC-V so likely we would see the same outcome on those. While s390 is probably not particularly common and ppc64 probably isn't too much better, RISC-V may start to see some more adoption.

This issue seems related:
#1484

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