http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/TomCallaway/SecondaryArchitectures

[Manas Saksena]

Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-07-11 at 17:13 -0700, Manas Saksena wrote:
>> Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2007-07-11 at 15:51 -0700, Manas Saksena wrote:
>>>> Note that this is not a secondary architecture issue, per se. From
>>>> what
>>>> I can tell, the OLPC-Fedora distribution is already doing this within
>>>> the Fedora infrastructure. 
>>> To an extent, yes, although, they're still following the Fedora
>>> Packaging Guidelines.
>>>
>>> I'd be very interested in the guidelines that you feel you might need to
>>> break/ignore. :)
>> Packaging guidelines may be the wrong term. But, you often need to do
>> surgery (and sometimes a deep one ) to packages when you are trying to
>> squeeze functionality into a 4MB flash (or 16, 32, 64MB -- whatever).
>> At other times, you want to have tools (much like pilgrim, revisor,
>> etc.) that can ensure that whatever hacked up distro you end up creating
>> can be re-created automagically from your package repository (and, have
>> some resilience when packages get updated etc.).
> 
> There's also hardware that lacks FPU.  So you have to build every
> package with -msoft-float.  The list for the embedded cases is endless.

ACK.

> I also believe basing something off of Fedora and expecting the main
> Fedora distro to accommodate them at all is unrealistic.  

I agree. But, it is not necessary unrealistic to allow derivative
distros under the Fedora project umbrella. Nor, is it necessarily
unrealistic (or a bad idea) for Fedora infrastructure to make it a
little easier to create these derivative distros (with appropriate
support added to infrastructure and tools, etc.). Not today, but
sometime in future --- maybe.

> If you're
> going to make a distribution that does not have it's changes in CVS,
> it's not "based on Fedora" or "derived from Fedora".  It's "the OMG WTF
> BBQ distribution, built with some tools from Fedora.. maybe."

Sure, however..

At least in the case of ARM, the interesting part is largely in the
derivative distributions. The base distribution can be used in some
limited contexts (e.g., for development or in systems where you can
hook up a disk), but the real success will depend on our ability
to create (and, allow other developers to create) these derivative
distributions.

And, it is certainly fine for us to do these outside the scope of the
Fedora project umbrella. Fedora is used as an upstream for many embedded
distros already. Our goal is to make it easy for the various embedded
ARM distributions (including the ones we create ourselves) to make use
of the Fedora-ARM as the upstream.

Regardless, it is beneficial to us to ensure that packages work well
on ARM. And, since Fedora is close to upstream, this is beneficial to
all downstream users.

> Derivative distributions are entirely outside the scope of secondary
> arches.

Thats fine. As I said before, I wanted to make sure where the boundaries
were.

Regards,
Manas