[indiana-discuss] [Fwd: [desktop-discuss] SFE binary packages for OpenSolaris]

[Bart Smaalders]

Alvaro Lopez Ortega wrote:
> Bart Smaalders wrote, On 12/12/2007 19:33:
>  > Alvaro Lopez Ortega wrote:
>  >> Darren Kenny wrote, On 12/12/2007 12:34:
>  >>
>  >>> but that's not how it's done right now, and I don't know if there is
>  >>> any intention on going that way unless the community really push for
>  >>> it...
>  >>
>  >> I do hope so.. I have used that a million time on Debian. It is a
>  >> really handy way of taking advantage of having the source code
>  >> available.
>  >
>  > IPS doesn't include a build system for the same reason it doesn't
>  > specify an IDE to be used for editing source files - it's not the
>  > problem we're trying to solve.
>  >
>  > The prime requirement for a build system is reproducible builds;
>  > given the proper tool chain, and build machine OS release,
>  > anyone can produce the same set of bits anywhere from the source
>  > code.
>  >
>  > Today, Sun's build environments are broken into "consolidations";
>  > these are sets of software built at once, with internal dependencies
>  > resolved from the just developed bits.  This allows us to consider
>  > interfaces purely internal to the consolidation as private, and
>  > since all components of the consolidation are always built and delivered
>  > as a set, we can avoid having to carefully version and control those
>  > private interfaces.  In other words, if I can update all the
>  > producers and consumers of an interface w/ a single putback or push
>  > or commit, I avoid significant disruption and flag days, etc.
>  >
>  > Dividing most current Solaris consolidations into source packages that
>  > could be build separately would require a very substantial amount
>  > of effort to careful version and control all private interfaces.
> 
> There is not need for that, actually. There could be source packages
> that would produce many binary packages; that is why I said it would
> need both the source to binary relations and order of those relations.
> 
> Let's imagine the worst possible case: you need to build the complete
> ON consolidation in order to get a little binary package built. It
> would not be perfect, but it would be much better than having nothing.
> 
> In fact, I suppose that we will eventually start dividing big
> consolidations into packages -think of JDS, it is big set of
> independent source packages.
> 
> So, my points were:
> 
>  - Having source packages and binary packages relations is really
>    useful. In fact, it is something that has proved to be helpful in
>    other OSes and that many users miss.
> 
>  - There wouldn't be any *real* need to change the consolidation
>    system. It wouldn't be very efficient because of the large builds,
>    but again, that would be much better than missing the feature. And,
>    in fact, we are using LOT of F/OSS software that is not based on
>    that sort of consolidations.
> 
>  - I would have said that the state of the art kind of forced us to
>    implement it. Even if you wanted to think of it like a
>    "nice-to-have", it is a very important one if you think that we're
>    targeting developers.
> 

You're missing the point.  ON developers don't build from source
packages; they'll build from a mercurial workspace.  Why would
anyone who's not working on ON compile it from source, and why
should the OpenSolaris community spend the man years needed to
support this?


- Bart


-- 
Bart Smaalders			Solaris Kernel Performance
barts at cyber.eng.sun.com		http://blogs.sun.com/barts