[oi-dev] Plan for Hipster SPARC edition

[Adam Števko]

Hi Gary,

I will keep this short as I will be repeating what disccused the last time. I am not very happy about this because it evolved exactly like I thought it would. More message are inline.

> On 21 Jun 2017, at 23:30, Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
> I've now completed my build of oi-userland on SPARC hardware, at least
> to the extent that was possible with oi_151a8 .  Yes, the latest OI
> SPARC ISO is version oi_151a8 .  This is a major obstacle to Hipster
> development on the SPARC platform.

Great job! However, how does it help if there are no up-to-date SPARC illumos bits available? The plan was to get minimal illumos up and running, so we could self-host Jenkins on SPARC. What happened with this? Instead of SPARC people working together, we get multiple SPARC initiatives with no major milestone achieved anywhere.

> I propose, first of all, to create a Hipster ISO.  It won't be
> current, but it will be a much better base for further development.
> With this as a base, I and other developers will be able to build many
> more oi-userland packages.

You can build the ISO yourself and share it. I will be able to host undet contrib/ section on DLC and mirror it worldwide.

> I also propose to create a SPARC package repository to go along with
> the ISO.  Any SPARC developer will be able to contribute to this
> repository.  I haven't built illumos-gate, but perhaps other
> developers have already done this, and can contribute packages.  If
> not, I can do it.

With no build host, no build platform we are not able to self-host SPARC Jenkins and cannot do builds. Setting up a repository and blindly accepting built packages from people is not a very good approach from security point of view and I wouldn't recommend it. With the current setup, we are getting reviews from people and are able to spot potentionaly suspicious things at least.

> We need a few facilities to proceed with this plan.  One is a set of
> instructions for creating ISOs, particularly the text ISO, along with
> a list of packages to be included.

Distribution constructor files for hipster are available at 
https://hipster.openindiana.org/distro_const/, how to build ISOs can be found on the wiki.


> We also need a repository for SPARC packages, with a mechanism to
> permit any SPARC developer to upload packages to this repository.


> Finally, we need storage for a few ISO files.
> 
> The ultimate goal, of course, is an automatic procedure for building
> SPARC packages from the same code base as the current x86 packages.

Why not provide with the illlumos SPARC first and then go for oi-userland? We tried to put you, SPARC guys, in touch and create a joint effort for SPARC version of OpenIndiana, so we could release a reasonsble and instead we got fragmentation again. I don't think a lot can be achieved without SPARC build host, build platform and people willing to maintain SPARC version.

Please, don't take it badly, but I think we should follow one common cause if we want this project to stay alive, healthy and somewhat relevant. We have limited resources and we shall do better coordination. After all, fragmentation doesn't help anyone.

Cheers,
Adam



> 
> 
> -- 
> -Gary Mills-        -refurb-        -Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-
> 
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