[oi-dev] Where should SPARC go?

[Alexander Pyhalov]

Hi, Gary.


________________________________________
От: Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm>
Отправлено: 18 ноября 2019 г. 0:39
Кому: oi-dev at openindiana.org
Тема: [oi-dev] Where should SPARC go?


> First of all, how much interest do you have in OI on SPARC?  My
interest is as a developer and tester.  What is your interest?
I'd like to determine the size of the audience.

I'm not sure about ways of collaboration which would be beneficial to both x86 and SPARC build. 
The most important question for me is testing SPARC build.
Let's say, I update component A. It has some SPARC-specific patches. They don't apply. What should I do? Drop them and hope someone interested in SPARC fixes it? I don't think it'll suit you. 
So, first of all we need some build host, where changes could be checked.
At least that they build. What if they build, but doesn't work? I have to spend some time to find out, what's wrong with this package on SPARC. This doesn't suit me ;)

So, I see the following 'ideal' world.
1) There's  a set of OI/SPARC build zones, available to OI developers.
2) There's a branch (or clone) of oi-userland, which is 'current OI SPARC head'
3) These repositories/branches are merged when changes are ready.
4) Preferably,  we have means to build each PR on SPARC with little effort.
5) In ideal world, both SPARC/x64 bits would live in one repository, but this requires merging packages built for separate architectures. I don't expect this to happen (soon?). But at least we need some 'current-state-of-the-art' SPARC repository. I suppose we can host it on OI pkg server, if 1-3 are satisfied.

What about current steps which will at least partially lead us to 'ideal' world.
1) We need SPARC zone with jenkins, which automatically builds some subset of packages, which are known to be working on SPARC.
2) I can create a oi/sparc branch on OI repo for current SPARC work, which will periodically be merged to oi/hipster.
But without 1) I thinks further talk is useless.

P.S. Now I have less and less free time which I can devote to OI. I will not be able to spend a lot of time on OI/SPARC (and would prefer to spend it on OI/x64 if there's choice ;) ).


>>> How should I contribute to OI on SPARC?  I have plans to build more
packages, and to do so with fewer changes to the OI source.  I also
have plans to update the distribution from the current 2018 to 2019 or
2020.  Does this sound reasonable to you?

How should you contribute to OI on SPARC?  I've filed bug reports
for many of the changes I've made.  They can be seen at:

    https://www.illumos.org/projects/openindiana/issues

I've attached patches to each bug report, but in order for these
patches to be integrated into the OI source, the patches need to be
turned into PRs for github.  They also need to be tested on x86 to
make sure they don't accidentally change anything there.  Can you help
with any of this?  Can you build packages for SPARC from OI source?
Can you help in any other way?

What type of repository do you prefer?  Should it be file-based, as it
is now, or should it be remote, as for OI x86?  The repository will
only get larger, as people build more packages and publish them.  Will
you download such a large file?  I don't know of any way to merge
repositories, so there must be only one.

Finally, who should coordinate OI on SPARC?  Should this be done by
the OI project, or should it be done separately?  Keep in mind that OI
SPARC uses OI source.  Most of it builds and publishes with no
changes.  When changes are necessary, my plan has been to introduce
them with no harm to x86 packages built from the same source.  Indeed,
some of the changes fix bugs in the corresponding x86 packages.  Also
keep in mind that IPS is designed to handle multiple architectures,
making it easy to integrate SPARC with x86.  In fact, this is already
done for illumos.


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

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