[maemo-developers] Build Server Configuration

[From: Ove Kaaven]

Jeremiah Foster skrev:
> I find it fascinating that a Free Software operating system, without a very formal form of governance, without any assets of its own aside from SIP, run completely by volunteers, has a larger build farm than the world's leading handset manufacturer. 

For all we know, there could be a big farm, just that non-Nokia
developers just don't have access to it, due to legal issues.

> What about tools like qemu and dpkg-cross? Can't they be used to build debs without scratchbox?

Can you run Maemo directly under qemu? Perhaps, but that would probably
mean working for a while improving qemu. Scratchbox already uses qemu
where necessary to run binaries in the armel target, and this
environment is already infamous for not actually being able to run much
(and gcc itself is even hooked to run natively, not under qemu, I think,
as it runs better and faster that way). I suspect that if you want a
qemu-based solution anytime soon, you need Scratchbox.

dpkg-cross is only a minor tool for porters to be able to install
cross-compilation libraries so they can manually cross-compile stuff. It
doesn't actually do any compilation itself. To my knowledge, Debian has
no toolchain around it that could be used for anything like a buildd.
And if you tried to build such a toolchain, you'd probably just end up
reinventing Scratchbox...

> Mer builds packages on OBS - why can't we do that for Maemo?

I thought you wanted to use Debian tools? Besides, I believe OBS is
based on a standard Debian install, which Mer probably aims to be
compatible with, but Maemo isn't.