[CentOS-devel] Interested in IA64 build.

[Lamar Owen]

On 10/09/2012 10:46 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> And, well, after 34 hours, 9 minutes, and 53 seconds (with an average 
> of 213% CPU usage; having multiple CPUs does help some), the 5.8 GA 
> tree is built, with no build failures that weren't expected 
...

> CentOS release 5.8 (Final)
> Kernel 2.6.18-308.el5 on an ia64
>
...

> The next step is step building the 5.8 updates, probably in %{BUILDTIME} order as the first attempt, and getting a fully updated system.
Well, it wasn't actually the next step, since other more pressing work 
matters took precedence, and the IA64 build of updates, the completion 
of self-hosting of the build, etc, took a back seat to major data center 
renovations for a couple of months.  I decided I would wait until 5.9 
was out.  Now that that has happened, and I got a free weekend to fire 
up the space heater ^H^H^H buildhost (again, photos of the buildhost can 
be seen at http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16725868 ).....

Almost all of the 5.9 GA updated/new packages are built (just a couple 
of packages are being stubborn, and those have a history of being 
stubborn, at least on IA64 and on this buildsystem; I'm using smock), 
and I have test-updated the second Altix box to 5.9:
CentOS release 5.9 (Final)
Kernel 2.6.18-348.el5 on an ia64
.....

The next step is logically to start tracking the updates from 5.9GA, 
first.  Then, work on getting the build to be self-hosting is a thought; 
the other thought is going all the way back to the upstream sources and 
building them in their build order (by RPM buildtime) to get a few of 
the corner cases solved; the really old c5-wip tree Karanbir made a few 
years back is the logical starting place, and SLC5 media could be used 
to get to that place..... Neither of those are high priorities; keeping 
up to date with what I have is the priority.

Third-party repos are also on the plate, since there are several 
packages we need that are in either EPEL or RepoForge.  Those are 
probably higher on the list than making the build fully self-hosted, really.

But if more were interested in the IA64 build, the priorities could 
definitely change.  Given enough interest, install media would be a 
logical step, and while that is on my list of things to do, it's not 
high on that list.  I can get from SLC54 to C5.9 stepwise, and I have 
SLC54 media, and while it is a bit of a process to do, it's not 
something I plan on doing too many times, since we only have three of 
the IA64 SGI Altix systems.

Again I'll say that this process can be a lot of work.  The vast 
majority of the time it takes is in the building itself, and this is not 
something that is easily parallelized, at least not by hand; 
particularly, 5.5 to 5.6 was a pain due to a couple of major changed 
packages and dependent packages that had to be built in a very specific, 
sequential, order to get to work (I've documented that in posts to this 
list in the past).  5.8 and 5.9 have been quite easy in comparison to 
5.6; 5.7 wasn't hard, but 5.6 was.

Anyway, just a quick status update on where my IA64 rebuild stands.