util-linux missing from build root

[Phil Knirsch]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:08:40 +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 02:55:12PM +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>>> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:10:57 +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
>>>
>>>> I also considered util-linux, when jnovy mentioned that a package
>>>> needs "kill" to build properly.  But I came to a conclusion that
>>>> "kill", "mount", nor any other command from util-linux doesn't have
>>>> to be in the minimal buildroot.
>>> arch, flock, getopt, rename  are nice to have by default.
>> well, might be nice, but I'm afraid we need to be more exact.
>>
>> Could you please find out or estimate, for each of the utils you
>> mentioned:
>> - how many upstream tarballs do not build without it?
>>   - if they do not build, is it a transparent error, or
>>     is it a hard-to-debug problem (builds but does not work in
>>     certain special cases, for eample)?
>> - how many spec files call the utility?
>>
>> If the number of packages affected is small, and if the broken
>> packages are easy to discover and fix, we can leave util-linux out.
> 
> Hyperbole. If such an enormous effort is needed to justify adding a
> core package, it is certainly not worth it. It would require burning
> cycles on thousands of tarballs, builds and checker-scripts to see
> whether a tarball disables features or self-tests when a tool is
> missing.
> 
> The "initscripts" package used to require "util-linux". For a package
> that is available on the majority of Fedora/RHEL installations, I
> don't see any reason to make it a special optional build requirement.
> 
> I'd rather add a generated set of buildroot packages to spec files
> and save the time.
> 

Actually, we have been using a rebuild script here that actually does 
some of those tests, though it's by far not 100% correct as it basically 
only checks after a rebuild if

  - The package built at all. If not, keeps the logfile to see where it 
went wrong to figure out what was missing
  - The build worked but the new requirements are different from the 
"original" build.

The 2nd point obviously only covers stuff that generates requirements, 
but in most cases this will happen (e.g. if you build some package that 
checks for a lib and the devel package for that lib isn't installed it 
will disable the feature then your final package will not have the 
requirement on that said lib anymore, so an automatically detectable 
change).

I think Karsten Hopp sent around a list every once in a while with the 
results of those rebuilds. We're currently in the process of cleaning up 
and documenting those rebuilds scripts properly (ugly hacks FTW ;) ) and 
release them in the near future (some public repository). Keep in mind 
though that a full rebuild of Fedora even on PHAT machines takes an 
awful lot of time. We're using a big Intel 4 CPU dual core HT machine 
(so virtually 16 CPUS) with loads of memory and even on that box it 
takes several days to complete. Also disk storage needs to be quite 
large as we need to keep a whole tree mirrored on disk (source and 
binaries for comparisons) together with up to 20 build processes running 
at the same time and logfiles and final binary rpms being stored. Ofc 
you can do single rebuilds or partial trees with the scripts as well. ;)

Read ya, Phil

-- 
Philipp Knirsch              | Tel.:  +49-711-96437-470
Team Lead Core Services      | Fax.:  +49-711-96437-111
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