[maemo-community] Maemo / Nokia might want to take advantage of debian's potential new build system

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Apr 22, 2009, at 12:47, David Greaves wrote:
> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
>> On Apr 21, 2009, at 23:06, David Greaves wrote:
>>> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
>>>> This projects aims to build a more efficient automated build system
>>>> for debian's infrastructure. Maybe there are ideas and code to take
>>>> and use on maemo.org.
>>> :D
>>>
>>> Try this:
>>> http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/
>>
>> I have looked at this previously and think it is a great idea. I am
>> not convinced that I want my software sitting around on Novell's
>> servers though. I think they are a little confused about free  
>> software.
>
> 3 points:
> * OBS is completely GPL
> * so... a setup of obs.maemo.org is encouraged (I intend to setup a  
> local OBS here)
> * Suse/Novell are providing a very valuable and free service to the  
> OSS
> community. There is zero tie-in just a 165 strong server farm.
>
> Novell's "confusion" is important but, IMHO, not relevant here.

Fair enough. I agree that obs.maemo.org is a very good thing, I hope  
we can do that.
>
>>> Someone else has been looking at it too:
>>> https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=Maemo%3A4.1
>>
>> Ditto, plus this page asks me for a login. FAIL.
>
> I didn't realise the page needed a login; but really... "FAIL".  
> Maybe you could
> look a _little_ deeper.

Putting stuff behind a login is not very "free." So yes FAIL, though  
not EPIC FAIL.
>
> The OBS guys are aware that their ties to Suse/Novell make it sound  
> like a
> builder for a single distro. However it isn't.
>
> It builds for:
> * Debian
> * openSUSE
> * SLES
> * Fedora
> * RHEL
> * CentOS
> * Mandriva
> * Ubuntu
> and now:
> * Mer
> and lots more...
>
> on
> * armv5el
> * i586
> * ia64
> * ppc
> * ppc64
> * x86_64
>
> and it builds *all* the packages (as in the entire distro) for the  
> offical SUSE
> repos.
>
> OBS is more a VM/chroot manger that runs each distro's own packaging  
> and build
> software. It supports Xen/KVM/Qemu/chroot.
>
> So for Debian it does an apt-get build-essential, pulls all the  
> build-depends
> and then runs dpkg-buildpkg. Similarly for other distros.
>
> Oh, it also provides a working local buildservice that doesn't need  
> scratchbox
> hacks.
>
>> I think the Debian SoC project might provide a more modern, and
>> hopefully robust, build system implemented in a language that Maemo
>> uses (python)
> Mmm "decision by language".

I think that was decided long ago. :P In any case, python is not the  
language I would have chosen and unfortunately decision based on  
language is perhaps the most common way to decide what to use in the  
community anyway. Otherwise we would all be using lisp.
>
>> that can be moved to a local server as opposed to queued
>> in Novell's build system.
> As can OBS.

That rocks.

>> It is the entire chain of automated tools
>> that is so complex and hard to manage - having an easier system would
>> be a huge win for the community even if it is behind the scenes.
> Agree. Would you agree that it's good to find a mature solution with  
> a solid and
> funded team behind it then?
>
> As I said, Suse eat their own dogfood - OBS is used to build the  
> released SUSE
> distros.
>
> IMNSHO the SoC project is vapourware and/or a NIH toy by comparison :)

No prejudice there. :) And Luk Claes, the mentor of the SoC project,  
knows his stuff, so be prepared to be blown away.

> I admit I am biased - I thought Mer needed something to use as a  
> builder and
> when I found OBS met our needs I began using it. Mer 0.13 will  
> hopefully come
> from OBS and I'm now running Qt4.5 from OBS on Mer on my N800.

This points to a good data point for the OBS. Plus the more hackers  
work on it the better it gets. It's GPL, and relocatable. I agree that  
maemo should take a serious look at implementing it. Hmmm, I suppose  
that might even be my job? Should I put that on the sprint page? What  
do people think?

(I would like to also evaluate the debian SoC project once its done to  
see if that is worthwhile too.)

Jeremiah