Where is FreeBSD going?

[Brad Knowles]

At 2:27 AM -0800 2004/01/08, Kris Kennaway wrote:

>  It's certainly true that we're lacking in build hardware for some
>  non-i386 platforms (particularly sparc64), and this made it pretty
>  tricky to build packages for 5.2 on those architectures (a full
>  sparc64 build takes at least a month).  I've heard some rumours of
>  donated equipment waiting to be installed, but I don't know what the
>  status of that is.

	I've got a SPARC64 box sitting downstairs, waiting for me to 
install it.  Actually, I've got four of them.  I was planning on 
using one for FreeBSD support, one for NetBSD, one for OpenBSD, and 
one for Solaris.  I was also thinking about using the OpenBSD/sparc64 
box as a primary firewall (until I can get something better), but I 
imagine that NetBSD really doesn't need much more sparc64 support 
right now -- maybe I could reconsider using that one for sparc64 
package support.

>  Likewise, a 5.2 i386 build takes about a week, which means that the
>  freeze *cannot* be shorter than this, even if everything goes
>  perfectly (which, in practise, never happens).  This time around, the
>  freeze started on 23 Nov and was lifted on 3 Dec.  That's 10 days,
>  which is about as good as you could hope for.  If we could build
>  packages in - say - a day, we'd be able to cut the freeze time down
>  further, although I expect the duration would become limited by the
>  speed at which problems can be corrected.

	Sounds to me like a reliable RAM disk for temporary files would 
be very helpful.  There are at least one or two PCI card models that 
I think can take up to 8GB, and which I know work with Linux.  If 
they don't already work with FreeBSD, I would imagine it shouldn't 
take too much work to fix that.

>  Every now and then we get offers of access to a machine here or a
>  machine there to help with building packages.  The main problem with
>  donating machine resources is that there's limited space in the
>  freebsd.org equipment racks, and the package build system currently
>  needs LAN-equivalent connectivity between the machines.  To be useful
>  we'd either need a full cluster of faster machines located somewhere,
>  or to find time to rewrite the build scripts to work efficiently with
>  remote build resources.

	Hmm.  I would seriously consider donating one or two sparc64 
boxes to the project (once I confirm they work ;-), but I would want 
to make sure that there is space to support them.  Otherwise, I would 
be willing to run them from my basement.  Of course, that's precisely 
the problem you already have.

	I've done a bit of script hacking in the past.  Do you have any 
idea what would be required to hack these scripts to suit?


	Alternatively, I might be able to get you some additional build 
resources somewhere else.  In fact, I think this other place is 
probably already quite familiar with FreeBSD, and they might be 
surprised to hear about this need -- should I contact them?

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+
!w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++)
tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)