Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/cross/mingw-binutils

["Jonathan Perkin" <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2012-10-11 at 19:44 BST, John Marino wrote:

> On 10/11/2012 20:35, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> >* On 2012-10-11 at 19:17 BST, John Marino wrote:
> >
> >>That leads to another tangent: No build farms.  In an ideal
> >>(fantasy) world, somebody would throw their proposed changed in a
> >>build farm and ensure that no regressions (build failures) were
> >>suffered on any platform.  Pkgsrc BADLY needs something like this.
> >>I know it costs money, I'm sure we could scrape together funds for a
> >>dedicated machine but it still has to be hosted and controlled with
> >>other machines.  I don't see any talk about a facility like this,
> >>but I think it's essential to keep QA levels up.
> >
> >We (Joyent) have a pkgsrc build farm.  It's not public access, but I
> >am more than happy to run a bulk build for a particular change if
> >someone is worried it will break lots.
> >
> >If you put the change up on github then it's even easier.
> >
> >SmartOS only, though, of course :-)
> >
> 
> Right, that's kind of you.  I was thinking along the lines of what
> FreeBSD port guys do.  I don't know how automated it is, but every
> proposed change to a port is run through a tinderbox for every
> architecture they support.  If it passes them all, then it gets
> committed.

 [ if we wish to continue this thread we really should rename it and
   move it elsewhere.. ]

It's a nice idea in theory, but I don't agree with doing this for
pkgsrc.  We have way too many supported platforms, and then when a
proposed patch breaks one or two of them you end up governance hell in
the form of tiered support.

And, as much as I've been bitten by this in the past, I don't think it
is ultimately the responsibility of the committer to ensure their
update works across all platforms.  Now, this rankles with me even as
I'm writing it, but ultimately the support for each platform is
determined by the people with an interest in keeping it supported,
even if that means I have to constantly clean up someone's breakage :)

This isn't to say we shouldn't do more bulk builds across more
platforms, we absolutely should!  But I'd prefer to keep it as a
retrospective action so that we do not hinder updates to pkgsrc,
because those are what ultimately keeps it alive.

> I know it's a very tall order, but its seems as pretty fundamental
> to me.  Now can SmartOS virtualize all these potential platforms?

Sure, SmartOS can run all these, but it's not something that Joyent
would invest in.  However, I'm happy to share our setup and assist in
setting something up.

Regards,

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com