RFC: Primary architecture promotion requirements

[Kevin Kofler]

Tomas Mraz wrote:

> On Tue, 2012-03-20 at 15:19 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> 4) All supported platforms must have kernels built from the Fedora
>> kernel SRPM and enabled by default in the spec file. Each kernel must be
>> built in a timely manner for every SRPM upload.
> 
> I do not like this requirement. This seems to be specifically provided
> to block the possibility to have ARM as a primary architecture if we do
> not want to support just one or two ARM platforms. I do not really see a
> problem in limiting platforms during rawhide development and branched
> development. Additional platforms could be enabled for final builds
> before the release freezes and for update builds.

Yet that requirement makes a lot of sense, and is yet another reason why ARM 
shouldn't even be CONSIDERED for primary status at this point. Building a 
separate kernel for every single machine just doesn't scale. Imagine if we 
had to build a Thinkpad kernel, a MacBook kernel, a Dell Inspiron kernel 
etc. (and I didn't even bring model numbers in here!). There's no way such a 
setup is supportable.

> Another solution might be in koji where the kernels for the additional
> platforms would be built in parallel on multiple build hosts. Of course
> that would require changes in koji.

Indeed it would, and it still wouldn't fix the underlying issue.

> Of course the general requirement that builds on the architecture to be
> promoted must not take much longer time than builds on the current
> primary architectures still stays.

Right, and I don't see ARM satisfying this any time soon either.

        Kevin Kofler