RFC: Primary architecture promotion requirements

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/20/2012 04:58 PM, Brendan Conoboy wrote:
> 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?

My #1 problem would be "making packages compilable" and bug-hunting 
arch-specific compilation problems.

> 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?

Yes, because "building primary archs first" doesn't help when 
build-problems are secondary arch specific.

That said, I considera  cross-building environment for secondary arch to 
be inevitable, which would at least help for the class of issues, I am 
referring to above.

Ralf