ARM rebuild

[Alexander Sack]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:08:12AM +0000, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 04:10:57PM -0600, Matthias Klose wrote:
> > On 18.11.2009 08:58, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > 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?
> > 
> > except for packages where a testsuite is run during the package build. but yes, 
> > it would be good to keep the packages built and  build a CD from these packages 
> > and test this one as well.
> 
> If I understand correctly, you're suggesting:
> 
>  * Test rebuild the archive
>  * Save the packages
>  * Build a CD from those packages
>  * Test the CD
> 
> Instead, I'm proposing:
> 
>  * Rebuild the packages in the archive
> 
> Isn't that much simpler and more effective?
> 

Right, actually during the arm rebuild session this was the outcome,
meaning: do in-the-archive rebuild for main and for selected universe
packages (and no out-of-archive test rebuild to to produce a CD image
from).

Looking at the past releases we found that most of main gets rebuild
anyway, so current plan is to let the archive evolve as usual (by
merges/syncs) and at some point review what packages did not
automatically got rebuild and then do those those manually.


 - Alexander