RFC: Mass rebuild of Fedora Extras before FC5 and how to handle orphaned packges for FC5

Thorsten Leemhuis fedora at leemhuis.info
Sun Jan 15 18:59:20 UTC 2006


Hi all.

We probably will have to do a rebuild of all (most?) packages in Fedora
Extras before FC5 is released. Why? Some reasons:

- Fedora Core 5 will ship with a new major version of gcc (4.1 in FC5
versus FC4 with 4.0).
- The new gcc has some enhanced security features that of course only
work if applications are compiled with it
- The new gcc and the modular X.org might break the compile of some
packages. Most things probably can be fixed easily if we do it now. If
we wait longer it might happen that other changes occur that break the
build in other fancy ways. That would complicate fixing a lot.
- rebuilding packages might expose some bugs in gcc or modular X.org
that can then maybe can be fixed before the release of FC5

But the most important reasons IMHO is: There are a lot of packages in
the devel tree that were not rebuild for a long time. I'm inclined to
say that the Extras Tree needs a quite bit of work before FC5 is
released.

Just look at your favorite mirror and sort by date (for example 
http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/fedora.redhat.com/linux/extras/development/SRPMS/?C=M;O=A
). Blender, tetex-eurofont, hackedbox, perl-IO-Tty, autotrace, ninja are
just some examples from the first 12 packages that were not rebuild in
the last year. 

Or just sort by name and search for the string "fc4" and look for
packages, were no newer version with fc5 in the name is around. I found
Macaulay2, SIMVoleon, cfs, cyrus-imapd, gnome-blog and stopped at that
point. Those were never rebuild since the release of fc4. 
Do these packages still work? Are they still up2date? Are they orphaned?
They probably did fail already during the last mass-rebuild for FC4 --
if they were not fixed until now then I think it's time to drop them
now. 

There are probably more reasons for a mass rebuild that don't come to my
mind just yet.

FESCo talked in its last meeting about this topic, too. Here is the
relevant parts of the discussion:

19:28 <         thl> | jeremy, "Mass rebuild of Extras for FC5"
19:29 <      jeremy> | thl: I still think we should wait until closer to test3 to even consider it
19:29 <      warren> | Jakub mentioned further fixes to gcc/glibc needed before we do it
19:29 <   mschwendt> | do we need a mass-rebuild of all Extras?
19:29 <   mschwendt> | if so, why?
19:30 <      jeremy> | mschwendt: it would be good to get things rebuilt for all of the new security stuff 
19:30 <         thl> | mschwendt, new security features from gcc 4.1
19:30 < ignacio|Sch> | Plenty of the packages haven't been rebuilt since 4.0.1.
19:30 <   mschwendt> | jeremy, thl: okay, that's a reason
19:30 <         thl> | mschwendt, and find all the problems that gcc 4.1 will show in the packages
19:30 <      warren> | well, our gcc-4.0.x had the fortify source stuff patched in earlier
19:30 <      warren> | but we should do it anyway
19:30 <         thl> | IMHO it's better we fix those now once and for all
19:31 <   mschwendt> | just asking because feedback on fedora-devel list was, well, poor.
19:31 <         thl> | the question imho is:
19:31 <         thl> | are the extras buildsystems fast enough?
19:31 <         thl> | they are a lot slower than behivve
19:31 <         thl> | and we need time after build to fix up stuff
19:32 <         thl> | that broke
19:32 < ignacio|Sch> | I could see it taking 4 days to rebuild everything.
19:32 <   mschwendt> | at least
19:32 <         thl> | yeah, probably longer
19:32 < ignacio|Sch> | With the issues plague/mock has been exhibiting, certainly.
19:33 <     jcollie> | is there any development going on in the yum/mock/rpm groups to speed up the time it takes to set up the build root?
19:34 <         che> | Sopwith, where can i read up on bouncer?
19:35 <         thl> | well, I'll try to start a discussion on fedora-extras-list about mass-rebuilding of extras for FC5
19:35 <         thl> | that okay for everybody?
19:35 <         thl> | I'll say that we'll do it around "test3"
19:35 <     bpepple> | thl: sounds good.

So guys, how do we do actually do that? 

Those people that have packages in Extras that were not rebuild in the
past 5 months IMHO should kick of a rebuild as soon as possible, just to
make sure everything still builds fine on FC5/rawhide. Note: Not all at
once please, it must be possible for others to request builds in case
they need to get a update with a security fix build.

The real mass rebuild should happen around test3. But that leaves not
much time to bring things in shape befor FC5 is released (only round
about 4 weeks). That's not enough IMHO. 

And we need some scripts that automate the process! Has anyone something
that can do that on the hard drive already? It should do something like
this:

a) increase release of all or some (see next point) package in cvs by
one. Add changelog entry.
b) request build of 10 packages (those that weren't rebuild for a long
time first, the others later). 
c) wait for the buildsys to finish those 10. That gives a chance for
other packagers to have access to the buildsys (to build for other dists
-- otherwise it might take to long until important security updates get
build)
d) Go back to b) [or a, depending on implementation of a) and b) ]

And what do we do with orphaned packages
( http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/OrphanedPackages ) ? Drop
them now? Rebuild them and ship them if they build? Who fixes those that
did not build? Or do we drop those until someone steps up to fix them? 

Who files bug reports for those packages that did not build and keeps
bugzilla in shape? We need new tracker bugs for Fedora Extras 5 just as
we had them for FE4:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=157183 (FE4Target)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=157553 (FE4Target-x86_64)
(was there one specific to FE4 and PPC? Can't remember)

People interested in PPC and x86_64 can look at the arch-specific bugs
this way and help fixing them in case the packager has no access to that
arch.

Note to myself (please remind me of it if I forget it): we should clean
up the devel tree shortly before FC5 -- we only should have one version
of each package in it. This way we get rid of all old files with "fc4"
in the release, too. 

Guys, comments please. And we probably need help from everyone to get
Extras in shape until FC5 i released! tia!

CU
thl
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>




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