[fedora-arm] ExcludeArch tracker doesn't appear to be effective

[Matthew Garrett]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 09:12:35PM +0100, Peter Robinson wrote:

> So at the moment there's around 15,000 source packages in Fedora
> mainline and you're getting depressed over exactly 24 of them? I'm not
> sure how 24 packages is providing a inconsistent experience. In some
> cases the maintainer of the package hasn't bothered to close the bug
> when support was added, in some cases ARM was added incorrectly. For
> example just before mass rebuild we added Ada support which closed out
> around 2 dozen other packages we didn't build prior.

What's depressing is the trend, not the absolute count. I'd expected it 
to head rapidly towards zero after the first release, but instead it's 
still growing.

> Ultimately I fail to see how missing 20 odd packages out of 15,000 odd
> fails to "provide a consistent experience across primary
> architectures" so if there's something more specific and constructive
> you'd like to provide it would be useful or is this just a random rant
> because your bored?

Anyone who has a usecase that relies on one of those packages will have 
an inconsistent experience if they attempt to reproduce it on ARM. 
That's harmful. It makes us look bad. It gives the appearance that we're 
willing to release a worse product simply in order to claim ARM support.

> Ultimately we've been working hard to provide as consistent
> environment on ARM as possible and improving all the time and all you
> seem to do is randomly come in Magpie style and shit on something
> without any other visible involvement in the ARM process or community
> or any context and pick on something of random like a bully. If you've
> got constructive criticism feel free to engage properly to assist us
> in improving and coming up to your exacting standards but this means
> of bullying tactics isn't the way to do it.

I don't think the current state of the ARM port is good enough. That's 
not a reflection on the people involved. That's not a criticism of the 
amount of effort that's been made. I just want to know how we can get 
from where we currently are to where we want to be. Individual package 
maintainers seem happy to just add an ExcludeArch, maybe file a bug 
against upstream and then forget about the issue. Given a lack of direct 
incentive for them to care about ARM, that's not terribly surprising. 
What can we do about that? Is the only realistic answer to find the 
resources to have a team to hunt down and fix portability issues that 
are sufficiently far from the core that the existing ARM community can't 
justify the time? And if so, is there any way we can make that happen?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org