Brendan Conoboy wrote:
Really? You're going to base your entire opinion on build time
data on
inappropriate hardware for one package without knowing even what the
factors are in the build time? What if 50% of that time was due to test
timeouts that require a simple fix? Please turn down the hyperbole dial
and think before jumping to conclusions.
Those numbers were just one example, which reflects the trend I've
experienced (also following the efforts to build KDE packages on the
secondary architecture infrastructure) fairly well.
And in addition, build time is just one of the reasons (though the main one)
why I don't think ARM should be a primary architecture.
If all Fedora is to you is a means of turning source code into
binaries at
lightning speed, x86 is great for you.
Indeed, x86 is great for fast builds, which are an important part of Fedora,
because they're part of what allows us to deliver current software quickly
and efficiently (e.g. we're usually the first binary distribution to offer
the latest KDE Software Compilation bugfix release as an official, tested
update – don't forget that "First" is part of our 4 'F's).
I'm pretty sure Fedora is more than that.
Sure, but that doesn't mean build times are not important.
And if Fedora is going to be relevant in a few years time, it better
support the CPU that is inside the computers everybody is buying today.
1. It supports it. As a secondary architecture. Why is a secondary
architecture not good enough support? (And why can't those issues be fixed,
benefitting all secondary architectures?)
2. We can discuss making it a primary architecture "in a few years time", if
ARM is really that successful by then. Why now? There's nothing requiring
the change to be made NOW.
3. Your definition of "computers" is not the same as mine.
Er, no, that's what you believe you need. I need packages to
build in a
period of time that works for the affected developers. You're
responsible for some packages I believe so why don't you start by
looking at how you would personally would be affected and talk about
that? With as few exclamation points as possible, please. What's your
slowest building package?
Probably kdelibs.
We can probably extrapolate how long it will take to build with
first
generation ARM server hardware. From there we can talk about how that
affects you work flow as well as how to handle it being delayed.
kdelibs is the first package which needs to be built for KDE SC updates and
we cannot start building any of the others before it is complete. (And also
note that there are some other interdependencies, e.g. several modules also
depend on kde-workspace, which also takes a while to build.) Last I checked,
Rex Dieter reported that kdelibs took many hours to build on the secondary
architecture ARM builders even with apidocs disabled; with apidocs enabled
(which is how we build it on the primary architectures; also note that the
apidocs build process is NOT parallel), it was taking so long that it timed
out entirely.
And in addition to individual packages taking too long to build, I also
expect the aggregate latency due to many small package builds all taking 5
to 10 times as long to waste a lot of my time. I already find it painful to
wait for my builds to complete even now!
Kevin Kofler