Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Laurent Guerby]

Hi,

In 2002, I contributed to the FSF France 10000 euros (half coming from 
tax deduction)
<http://france.fsfeurope.org/donations/donators-money.fr.html>

For 2003, I'd like to contribute hardware to the GCC project, so
that contributors to the GCC project can set up automatic build and 
regression tools
and various other things could help the GCC project. (This
is in addition to what various people and companies already provide.)

FSF France currently benefits from rack space and network
connectivity in Paris France kindly donated by Free (www.free.fr) under 
the supervision
of Antoine Levavasseur who said it was ok to add some machines
provided that we use the same space, do not consume excessive
bandwitch and don't need constant on site intervention. Loic Dachary who 
manages
the FSF machines there (with a few others :) is okay
to replace the 2x4U old machines there by a
a more powerful 1U server and so this leaves 7U for new machines.

I have no particular experience in the harware purchase area,
I just checked dell.fr and a Dual P3 1.3GHz, 512M RAM, 36G disk
machine is around 2200 euros, for an equivalent
donation on my side, that would be four machines so
three left for GCC, and 4U of space left (one old machine stays).

Provided that the GCC projects agrees that this is indeed
beneficial and doable, to move on a few points are to be considered:

- May be other people or company want to contribute too, they're
welcome. You might want to check with their local
FSF or libre software representation if you can channel tax-deducible 
donations
to this project, or ship useful harware to Paris.

- Advices on where to get better/cheaper or donated harware
are welcomed. If people have contacts with hardware makers or
potential sponsors, I'd appreciate if they could either get in touch with
them and talk about this project or give me their reference.

- There might be other connectivity options elsewhere.

- May be other hardware (P4, Athlon, PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, ...) can be 
of use,
but we can use GDB/RTEMS simulators otherwise.

- Discussion on how to decide what's useful and who does what
needs to take place. One idea is to use the GCC CVS
and the regular commit procedure and have the slave machines
do things based on what they take out the GCC CVS. Output
would then be rsync'ed somewhere to be archived, processed and
displayed on one or more web site.

- Suggestions and ideas welcomed :).

Sincerely,

-- 
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Fergus Henderson]

On 12-Feb-2003, Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> wrote:
> For 2003, I'd like to contribute hardware to the GCC project, so
> that contributors to the GCC project can set up automatic build and 
> regression tools and various other things could help the GCC project.

Thanks!  I think that would be very useful.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne         |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Laurent Guerby]

After a few private emails, it appears that there is no real procedure for
donating to the GCC project, hence no approval procedure :). Could the 
GCC SC
states wether it's okay to proceed with the donation or not?

-- 
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Mike Stump]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 01:04 PM, Laurent Guerby wrote:
> After a few private emails, it appears that there is no real procedure 
> for donating to the GCC project, hence no approval procedure :). Could 
> the GCC SC states wether it's okay to proceed with the donation or > not?

The status quo is for people to maintain ownership of their equipment, 
network links and the like, and donate use of those resources to 
relevant people on the gcc list.  This avoid liability, insurance, 
legal issues and so on.

If people really want to donate, the donations should be to the FSF 
directly (different contact address) with the details worked out there, 
and after that, the equipment made available to the SC or global write 
people for disposition and use (if OKed by the FSF).


For example, if I had a spare 16-way AMD Hammer system, I could set it 
up on the network, request a name, say cpu.gcc.gnu.org, get DNS set up 
for it, copy the /etc/passwd file from gcc.gnu.org, announce it on this 
list as a resource for people to put regression testers, builders and 
other CPU bound things on.

So, the right next step would be for them to decide if they must give 
it away or not.  And then, if they must, to contact the FSF directly.

One good reason why ownership might be better off left to the 
individual (or company), is that if the machine needs maintenance or 
upgrading, they perform it.

If this isn't status quo, someone can enlighten us.

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Laurent Guerby]

Mike Stump wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 01:04 PM, Laurent Guerby wrote:
> 
>> After a few private emails, it appears that there is no real procedure 
>> for donating to the GCC project, hence no approval procedure :). Could 
>> the GCC SC states wether it's okay to proceed with the donation or > not?
> 
> 
> The status quo is for people to maintain ownership of their equipment, 
> network links and the like, and donate use of those resources to 
> relevant people on the gcc list.  This avoid liability, insurance, legal 
> issues and so on.

I'm sorry if I was unclear or just forgot to say that the donation
itself is done in currency form to FSF Europe, which will buy
and install the machines at the facility kindly donated by free.fr and
already used by FSF Europe for other purposes. From there the machines 
will be dedicated
to the GCC project, my question is just wether the GCC project / SC
accepts this setup or not, and if yes, policy needs to be
decided on access and use (I of course have no more voice on this
topic than any other GCC developper).

-- 
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Mike Stump]

On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 02:21 PM, Laurent Guerby wrote:
> I'm sorry if I was unclear or just forgot to say that the donation
> itself is done in currency form to FSF Europe, which will buy
> and install the machines at the facility kindly donated by free.fr and
> already used by FSF Europe for other purposes. From there the machines 
> will be dedicated
> to the GCC project, my question is just wether the GCC project / SC
> accepts this setup or not, and if yes, policy needs to be
> decided on access and use (I of course have no more voice on this
> topic than any other GCC developper).

Ah, I see, it is in progress already.  In that case, if they money 
hasn't been spent or specifically earmarked by the FSF, the SC can 
decide how to spend it.  If they choose not to for any reason, someone 
should come up with a concrete proposal, and have it OKed by the FSF, 
and then it can be announced to the SC/gcc community after the fact?

If the SC doesn't like this approach, they can come up with another 
one...
:-)  (sly way of lighting a fire under them)

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Joe Buck]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 10:04:03PM +0100, Laurent Guerby wrote:
> After a few private emails, it appears that there is no real procedure for
> donating to the GCC project, hence no approval procedure :). Could the 
> GCC SC
> states wether it's okay to proceed with the donation or not?

You'd need a legal nonprofit to receive the donation.  I suppose that you
could give the gift officially to the FSF, or to FSF Europe, with the
understanding that the gift is for use by the GCC Project.  I'm sure that
RMS would go along with this.  I don't know about the law where you are,
but in the US, this would enable you to get a tax deduction for the value
of the gift.

Would you like to ask RMS directly, or would you like us (the SC) to ask
him for you what the best way to proceed is?

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Laurent Guerby]

Mike Stump wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 02:21 PM, Laurent Guerby wrote:
> 
>> I'm sorry if I was unclear or just forgot to say that the donation
>> itself is done in currency form to FSF Europe, which will buy
>> and install the machines at the facility kindly donated by free.fr and
>> already used by FSF Europe for other purposes. From there the machines 
>> will be dedicated
>> to the GCC project, my question is just wether the GCC project / SC
>> accepts this setup or not, and if yes, policy needs to be
>> decided on access and use (I of course have no more voice on this
>> topic than any other GCC developper).
> 
> 
> Ah, I see, it is in progress already.  In that case, if they money 
> hasn't been spent or specifically earmarked by the FSF, the SC can 
> decide how to spend it.  If they choose not to for any reason, someone 
> should come up with a concrete proposal, and have it OKed by the FSF, 
> and then it can be announced to the SC/gcc community after the fact?

Well, it has already been discussed with FSF France people and it's okay,
the plus is that we have hosting space and connectivity that's why I 
proposed
to just buy and install machines there (in the process, we'll
replace an old FSF Europe machine by a new one ). The donation
is not done yet, I wanted to ask if the GCC people were
okay with the idea before proceeding.


> If the SC doesn't like this approach, they can come up with another one...
> :-)  (sly way of lighting a fire under them)


-- 
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>

Re: Machine and hosting donation for the GCC project

[Loic Dachary]

Laurent Guerby writes:
 > Well, it has already been discussed with FSF France people and it's okay,
 > the plus is that we have hosting space and connectivity that's why I 
 > proposed

	As an official representative of FSF France, I confirm that
Laurent Guerby is authoritative regarding the usage of FSF France
funds dedicated to this project. In addition he is free to use our
co-location space and bandwidth. He already is directly in contact
with the organisation that donates space and bandwidth (one of the
largest french provider), on behalf of FSF France.

	I'm unsure if this "official" recognition is strictly
necessary but here it is anyway ;-)

	Cheers,

-- 
             Sauvez le droit d'auteur
Loic   Dachary   http://eucd.info/  loic@gnu.org
	      Tel : 33 1 42 76 05 49

'partial preprocessing' option request.

[Gareth Pearce]

Bit of a strange one prehaps...

But i would like a -E type flag which instead of outputing fully
preprocessed files - did 'just about everything' but missed a few steps.
a) it didnt expand #include <whatever>
b) It left the #define lines behind
c) whatever else is required so that resultant file produced same -E output
as original file.

My reasoning being, when someone (whos not highly experienced) is minimising
a testcase from some broken code - its unlikely that they will want 'part'
of a header included using <> style includes.  But disentangling everything
else Is something to help work on the minimisation process. - minimising
from that 'half unwrapped' stage should reduce the number of system headers
included and complete most of the reduction work that matters most - and so
then a full preprocessed file can be produced which either - will be simpler
to minimise then the original - or will be less work for whoever tries to
minimise the testcase once its submited.

Regards,
Gareth