[Arm-dev] Getting started / Build machines

[Gordan Bobic]

On 07/03/2014 07:08 PM, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> On 07/03/2014 11:52 AM, Gordan Bobic wrote:
>> Sure, but the time it takes to rm -rf the build root and then untar
>> a cached build root copy is a non-trivial fraction of the build
>> time for a lot of the packages. It is certainly not trivial when
>> you multiply it by around 2,000 for the number of packages you are
>> going to need to build.
>
> that solves one problem but creates lots others - eg. the builds
> resulting from this run wont be usable since they will have wierd and
> indifferent linking
>
> if its just a case of creating a knowledge pool about what does and does
> not otherwise build, to throw away the results, then sure - this would
> be marginally faster ( the time to build the base mock root is about 21
> seconds on th A15 node were using ). But if you intend to use the
> resulting content, I cant stress enough - use mock.

I'll see how it goes. It worked reasonably well for bootstrapping stage 
1 of EL6.

>>   From experience, anything you can do to get past the first stage
>> build faster is usually a good idea if hardware is limited - and
>> on ARM it usually is. Even on something like the Arndale Octa or
>> the new Chromebook which have 3-4GB of RAM and 8 cores, building
>
> which chromebooks are these ? I still think the server grade ARMv7 stuff
> available these days is much faster and capable.

The chromebooks I speak of are these:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/chrome-os-devices/XE503C32-K01US

The server grade ARMv7 machines like the Boston Viridis are quite 
awesome, but last I checked the cost/performance ratio of one of those, 
even fully populated, is a large multiple worse than the the new 
Chromebook or Arndale Octa. I've _very_ seriously considered getting a 
Viridis machine, but just haven't been able to justify the cost per unit 
of performance.

Gordan