[fedora-arm] ARM Primary FESCO discussion results, round 1

[Gordan Bobic]

Chris Tyler wrote:

>> Otherwise not paying attention to alignment in something like e2fsprogs 
>> could plausibly trash the file system:
>>
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=680090
>>
>> Even if sloppy programming is not an issue on later ARMs, IMO the 
>> alignment issues should be treated as bugs at least until ARMv5 support 
>> is completely dropped.
> 
> Alignment issues happen on x86 too, but we accept the cost of the
> hardware fixup and ignore them.

Only because they are "out of sight - out of mind" and most developers 
(myself included until relatively recently) don't know better. x86 
induced brain damage is not a good thing.

> Alignment issues are not necessarily
> bugs; sometimes they're the result of conscious decisions that the fixup
> is cheaper than the pages and pages of code required to avoid them in
> the first place (e.g., in streamed data).

FWIW, of all the alignment bugs I have observed in Fedora packages, 
precisely 0 were in streamed data. That leads me to think that most 
instances are oversights rather than conscious decisions.

>>> Anaconda isn't *quite* ready to go yet. And you don't actually gain much
>>> by using Anaconda for many devices- you still have to write an image to
>>> a removal storage device. Which you then run boot... and it writes a new
>>> image to a storage device. You've just made more work for yourself when
>>> you could have installed a working image directly.
>> In that case you might as well use the same installation procedure on 
>> x86, too - there's no reason not to.
> 
> We do, after a fashion (and then wrap it in some extra layers): it's
> called a Live Disc :-)

Indeed, but that's not an "installation".

Gordan