RFC: Primary architecture promotion requirements

[Brendan Conoboy]

On 03/20/2012 08:24 AM, Jakub Jelinek wrote:
> I think the speed of the build hardware should be also part of the criteria,
> as all primary architectures are built synchronously.  GCC on x86_64/i686
> currently builds often in 2 hours, sometimes in 4 hours if a slower or more
> busy box is chosen, but on ARM it regularly builds 2 days.  That is a slow
> down factor of 12x-24x, guess for other larger packages it is similar.

Our current build systems can turn GCC 4.7 around in about 24 hours. 
The enterprise hardware we anticipate using will take that down to about 
12 hours.  If speed of build hardware is a consideration, where do you 
draw the line?  No secondary arch is going to get to the speed of x86_64 
in the foreseeable future, so it's effectively a way to keep PA an 
exclusive x86 club.

I think the real question is, for the developers of on devel-list, how 
will longer builds for one arch than another affect your workflow?  If 
builds on two architectures start at the same time, but one takes longer 
to finish than the other, how will that impact you?  Right now you'll 
still be able to see and use the results of the faster build before the 
slower build completes, so are you materially impacted?

-- 
Brendan Conoboy / Red Hat, Inc. / blc at redhat.com