On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 3:44 AM, Brendan Conoboy blc@redhat.com wrote:
Hi everybody,
Fedora 19 has many of the enablers for native aarch64 in core packages such as glibc and gcc. Many more packages would compile if config.guess and config.sub recognized aarch64 as a valid architecture, but only the latest version of autoconf knows about aarch64. At last week's fedora-arm meeting we talked about the viability of automatically patching such packages. The outcome of that discussion was that we should first identify how many packages need such a patch, then decide what to do based on that number.
Red Hat's Al Stone has written a script which automatically generates patches for each package that needs it (And updates its spec file). After a complete run we can say that ~1850 packages need such a patch. The number may be larger, but it is definitely not smaller, as his only considers autoconf-using packages. If another auto configuration system is in use by a number of packages it too many need updating (cmake?). Now that we have this number, what do we want to do?
I see a few options:
Do nothing, trip over this issue at least 1850 times during bootstrap.
Mail all package owners asking for action.
Proven packager commits the patches, package owners take them out once
unnecessary.
- Run autoconf during build, incurring wrath of any packager whose package
isn't compatible with the latest autoconf.
- Your much more sensible idea goes here.
What say you?
Firstly where is the list of 1850 packages that are affected?
Also we do need to know whether the likes of cmake do need work or what else might need work. There's 13K packages in Fedora, of that how many are autoconf driven (so what sort of percentage is the 1850, it might give us an idea of what has been updated).
I don't see 1 and 4 as an option. Option 2 should read "File a bug against every affected package with it linked to a tracking bug asking them for action"
I think a "5) file a rel-eng bug with the patches and script and ask them to do it" which was I believe the plan prior to mass rebuild but the script/list wasn't ready in time/
Ultimately we need to get this done and any analysis of other non autoconf build platforms that might need the work too prior to the branching which is scheduled to happen on March 12. That gives us a week to get this sorted.
Peter