#5866: Create new channel for building Java packages

[Fedora Release Engineering]

#5866: Create new channel for building Java packages
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 Reporter:  mizdebsk  |       Owner:  rel-eng@…
     Type:  task      |      Status:  new
Milestone:            |   Component:  koji
 Keywords:            |  Blocked By:
 Blocking:            |
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 == Request ==

 Please create a new Koji channel for building Java packages which
 would exclude ARM builders, or implement an equivalent solution.  My
 goal is to be able to build noarch Java packages skipping any ARM
 builders.  Using custom koji command is not a problem for me.

 == Justification ==

 The great majority of Java packages are noarch.  As such they are most
 often pisked up by ARM builders.

 Java performance on ARM is very poor.  The situation got even worse
 after JIT for ARM was disabled in JVM.  ARM machines are often slower
 by one to three orders of magnitude than x86_64.  Some tests which
 execute in a few seconds on x86_64 can take over half an hour on ARM.

 Current state of Java on ARM combined with Koji configuration makes it
 difficult to maintain Java packages in Fedora.  A substantial amount
 of human resources is wasted on waiting for builds to complete,
 debugging tests which fail only on ARM, keeping track on builds and
 resubmitting them.  That resources could be utilised better and I
 think that justifies my request.

 == Alternative solutions ==

 I have tried differnt alternative solutions since ARM became a primary
 architecture and none of them is good enough.

 One ad-hoc solution is submitting numerous dummy koji tasks for ARM
 builders until their capacity is exhausted, then submitting Java
 package build and canceling ARM tasks.  This is obviously a hack and
 should be avoided.

 If Koji configuration is not improved the only remaining solution will
 be converting Java packages from noarch to arch-specific and adding
 ExcludeArch.  I still hope that ARM situation will eventually improve,
 so I would like to avoid doing drastic things like that, if possible.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng/ticket/5866>
Fedora Release Engineering <http://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng>
Release Engineering for the Fedora Project