ARM rebuild

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:42:34AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:52:58PM -0600, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > We should be a little careful about how we phrase our commitment here.
> > > As yet, we don't have the capability to do binary-only rebuilds on a
> > > single architecture, so the only way to rebuild all armel binaries would
> > > be to reupload every source package in the archive. This is a pretty
> > > good way to lose Ubuntu mirrors, and in the past we've decided that we
> > > didn't want to do that after all.
> 
> > > I think it should be adequate to identify a core set of packages and
> > > ensure that all of those get rebuilt, either during the initial merge
> > > from Debian or separately.
> 
> > I realize we've been conservative about this in the past, and for good
> > reason, but I think there are risks to this approach as well.  Unless we
> > rebuild everything, we don't know if it builds and works with the new
> > compilation defaults.
> 
> If this is the main concern, then I think we're much better served by an
> archive test rebuild that uses its own output, since this lets us rebuild
> everything without a need for per-package human intervention.  To do a full
> archive rebuild, someone will have to do a sourceful upload of each package,
> which I don't think makes sense if the goal is only to test the toolchain
> changes.

A test rebuild, as I understand it has been done in the past, will not tell
us whether the software works, only whether it builds.  Testing the
toolchain requires functionally testing its output as well, not just the
toolchain itself, no?

> > Would it be a reasonable compromise to slowly rebuild the archive over a
> > period of weeks or months to avoid a big hit on the mirrors?
> 
> In effect, we already have this for the majority of the packages in main as
> a side effect of the Debian import and our ongoing development work; if this
> is confined to main and deferred to around the middle of the development
> cycle, I would expect the set of packages that require uploads just for the
> rebuild to be minimal and manageable.

That seems reasonable to me, so long as everything gets rebuilt by an agreed
milestone.

-- 
 - mdz