[Fedora-ia64-list] fedora-ia64 status and progress

[Doug Chapman]

All,

It has been a while since my last update and actually I have some really
good progress to report.

We now have a koji server set up so we are building using the same tools
as the rest of fedora.  It is not yet linked to the main koji server yet
but hopefully that will happen soon.  Once it is linked what will happen
is anytime a package maintainer submits a build to koji it will run
through the normal x86 and ppc builds first, then if that passes it will
get sent to the ia64 (and other secondary arches) for building.

Currently I have a script running that polls the main koji server, looks
for recent jobs, then tries to submit the same job to our ia64 koji
builder.  This should help keep us somewhat up to date until the koji
servers talk to each other.

I have been working nearly non-stop on package building, filing bugs and
fixing some key packages.  Just yesterday I was able to get the latest x
server building along with all of the drivers.  I have not had a chance
to test it yet and it still concerns me.  There were some major changes
to PCI device code upstream that broke the ia64 build.  In theory all
that needs to be done is remove the ia64 specific hacks and let
libpciaccess deal with it.

We now have all the packages built that are required to build an install
image however there are some anaconda bugs currently preventing building
of installable images (this is not ia64 specific, no other arches can
build installable images right now either).


Now for the REALLY big news....

Within a few days expect to see ia64 on (at least some of) the regular
fedora mirror sites!  This means no more hacking of yum configs to point
to a different server!  This is a major milestone and I want to thank
Dennis Gilmore for helping make this happen.

In the meantime you can find the latest bits at:
http://ia64.koji.fedoraproject.org/fedora-ia64/
NOTE!! this is temporary and may disappear once we have bits up on the
regular fedora sites.

There is a rawhide-latest symbolic link there but for some reason yum is
having trouble for me if I try to use that and I have had to put the
real path (i.e. the path with the date) in my yum config.


Work to be done...

I need to get better at delegating since we have a good community and
lots of people asking how they can help.  I have a bad habit of seeing a
bug and jumping in.  So, for the todo list.  I thought about keeping a
separate list however why re-invent what already exists in bugzilla.

All the open bugs that are currently blocking us can be found at:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=fedora-ia64

Several have a fix provided in them already but the maintainers have not
pulled the fix in (I should be getting CVS access soon so I can check in
those fixes myself) but many others still need some triage.  Most of the
package maintainers do not have access to ia64 hardware so it will be up
to us to do triage and hopefully provide a patch.

Please look over the open bugs and if you see one you think you can help
out on please jump right in.  Be sure to either add a comment saying you
are looking into it so we can avoid duplication of effort.  Also, be
sure to add yourself to the cc list so you can see other peoples update
to that BZ.

- Doug