Re: Again the build is broken :(

[Elena Zannoni <elena.zannoni@oracle.com>]

Phil Muldoon wrote:
> Mark Wielaard wrote:
>> Hi Elena,
>>
>> On Fri, 2007-08-24 at 10:26 -0400, Elena Zannoni wrote:
>>  
>>> This leads to the question as to what are the standard development 
>>> platforms for frysk.
>>> FC6 and FC7? Or is older stuff still used? Should there be a 
>>> standard platform where
>>> pre-commit build and tests should be performed.
>>>     
>>
>> I am personally using Fedora Core 6 (x86_64) as main development
>> platform and test everything (quickly) on Fedora 7 (x86) before
>> committing. But I guess other people have other platforms available. I
>> do appreciate the autobuilder
> Personally I think an auto-builder is here for precisely the purpose 
> shown, in catching architecture-release build combinations breakages. 
> I just do not have the time to test arch * distro. The numbers add up, 
> and I normally test x86 and x86_64 on Fedora 7. There's no reason to 
> spend expensive and scarce human-time checking these, when a build 
> matrix can do it better, especially when the fixes are simple oversights.
> I'd rather have people contributing to features and fixing known bugs 
> and, to that end, making Frysk better.  And letting build matrices 
> build on every platform/release known to us, and linting test-cases 
> and build issues.
>

Sure, the two things you mention are not mutually exclusive.
However there is a cost to identifying broken builds too, and it seems 
that Mark is drawing the
short straw frequently, since he is usually the first to correct said 
oversights. It takes away some
of his time from development. I haven't suggested that you or anybody 
checks every combination
before checking stuff in. What I have suggested is that, like we used to 
do once upon a time, we
stick with as few development platforms as we can get away with in order 
to minimize the
oversights. So if the platforms supported are FC6 and F7, let's stick 
with those and make
everybody's life easier. If somebody wants to add FC5 to the test grid, 
please do so and contribute
the tests results so that they can be uploaded. Any takers?

elena