[Debian-ppc64-devel] Re: ppc64 archive bloating alioth disk ...

[Sven Luther]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2005 at 07:51:30PM +0200, Andreas Jochens wrote:
> On 05-Sep-20 13:05, Sven Luther wrote:
> > I just got an irc ping from Raphael Hertzog, who was complaining about the
> > 52GB bloat of the ppc64 archive on alioth, mentioning that alioth was not
> > meant for such stuff (basically forking the archive), and asked if we could
> > please put ressources usage to the strict minimum.
> > 
> > Could you do some cleanup, and possibly search for other hosting solution, or
> > let it all be and work together with us on the biarch setup and ppc64 rebuilds
> > of needed libraries and packages ? Start with those you are actually using, or
> > at least list those here, will be much easier that way.
> 
> Hello Sven,
> 
> thanks for the hint. I just freed about 25 GB of disk space on alioth 
> and I will do some further cleanup of the ppc64 package archive to 
> reduce the disk usage to probably about 15 GB.

BTW, i asked Bastian also about the augsbourg boxes, so see this with him.

> I still do not know how you intend to build 64-bit packages on a "biarch
> setup". Do you have any working patches for this? Or maybe a test 
> archive with installable 64-bit packages which could teach me how 
> this will work? 

We already have a biarch glibc, so that you can actually build the libraries
and stuff yourself.

The only thing that would be needed is to actually build the packages with it,
you can help by building the same packages you do right now, using the biarch
toolchain, and having them be arch: powerpc, and appending 64 in some way to
the name. Start with one library which is at the root of your dependency
forest, and try to build it as ppc64.

I could help, but please provide a list of packages you need to be in 64bit,
as you told us you use those, you need them to be handy, and we can start
converting one library to check things.

> I think it will be a _major_ task to create any kind of "biarch setup" 
> for a reasonable set of libraries for Debian. Many people have already 
> tried that and nobody had any success with this so far. 

Ah, yes ? Who tried it ? 

> The only libaries which are currently available in biarch versions for
> any architecture are libc6, libgcc1, libstdc++6, libz and libncurses. It 

Oh,  libz and libncurses too ? I thought only the base toolchain was biarch,
see it has already started.

> does not make much sense to extend this approach to a large set of other 
> packages. This would be somewhat similar to making the whole archive 
> cross-buildable. This is not the easiest way to get a large set of 
> installable 64-bit packages.

why not ? You only need to rebuild them a second time with -m64, no big
problem. We already do worse stuff for libraries built with -dbg or other
such, so no big problem.

> The better approach is the one that is called 'multiarch'. That approach 
> will allow to install packages that have been built for a different 
> architecture, i.e. ppc64 packages on powerpc and amd64 packages on i386
> and vice versa. That approach needs a native ppc64 package archive to 
> provide the ppc64 packages that can be installed on powerpc.

Sure, but will it be ready for the etch timeframe ? I have seen no sign or it
being near mature enough to consider that, and i get the feeling that it might
well be possible for etch+1 timeframe.

And then you have to consider the archive problems, even now as we speak,
amd64 is not properly integrated in the main archives, and so i don't see a
near future with ppc64 inclusion, while a biarch setup would need no such
trouble, so it is also more pragmatic to go this way.

> I need a reasonably complete set of 64-bit libraries for my own
> purposes. Because of this, I will not drop my own package archive until 
> there is another working solution for this, i.e. until there is a 
> working archive where I can install all necessary 64-bit libraries from.

And if you would start to propose us an extensive list of those libraries you
need, we could go somewhere, second time i ask you, or maybe third time, but
you didn't provide even a single such library.

> By the way, your lastest 2.6.12 powerpc64 kernel is working very well
> for me. Thanks a lot for your work on this and also for your work on
> the new linux-2.6 kernel packaging setup. That new packaging setup 
> is much better and cleaner than the previous one. I really hope that
> the kernel udebs for the installer can somehow be integrated into the
> unified approach and built from the linux-2.6 package directly instead 
> of using architecture specific 'linux-kernel-di-*' kernel-wedging 
> packages. This would make things even more transparent.

Indeed, but this needs discussing yet, so we will see.

Friendly,

Sven Luther