[oi-dev] Where should SPARC go?

[Peter Tribble]

Gary,

First of all, congratulations on getting this far! I know from experience
that
it's a non-trivial exercise :-(

On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 9:39 PM Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> I have a series of questions to ask the members of this mailing list.
> I have information to share with you as well.  I already have partial
> answers to most of the questions, but I'd still like to hear from you.
>
> 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.
>

My interest is indirect; it's good to see that the illumos on SPARC
ecosystem
has more participants.


> 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?
>

I think you need to decide what the bounds are (in terms of exactly what
packages you're going to include - I know that there's a reasonable number
of packages I ignore because they are broken or not interesting, a lot of
the
desktop stuff seems less than worthwhile for example, and of course there's
a whole pile of stuff like Go and Node that's never going to work).

Keeping up to date is a good idea. From experience, if you start to drift,
it's a
devil to catch up.


> 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?
>

Generally I'm building a lot of stuff on both x86 and SPARC. If you come
across problems, then I'm happy to help. (Although my normal response to
anything that doesn't get along is to excise it for the time being and find
something more cooperative to work on.)


> 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.
>

The one-file repo is fine for a single shot release, for people who only
have one system. (Although I imagine that people who have multiple
SPARC systems are thin on the ground, sadly.) But as soon as you
start considering updates, the download a massive blob model is no
longer viable.

And I think you should keep the sparc repository (if any) completely
separate
from the x86 repo the project runs. You'll likely be looking at completely
different needs and policies.


> Finally, who should coordinate OI on SPARC?  Should this be done by
> the OI project, or should it be done separately?


You're the one doing the work, so that's you. Having the project involved
is a drag on their time and a blocker on yours; keeping it as loosely
coupled as possible is best.

(This is a general theme; generally the x86 and SPARC sides will want
to avoid treading on each other's toes. And I occasionally find myself
tripping
over myself on Tribblix, where I'm both!)


> 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.
>

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
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