Re: Bits (Nybbles?) from the Vancouver release team meeting
Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes:
Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
Ok, I think I understand. Suppose that we have an arch that does have
enough download share, and meets every requirement but the existence
of sufficient buildds to keep up and developer machines, and that only
because hardware hasn't come available.
Who's downloading it, if there's no hardware to run it on?
I'm assuming that the separate requirements are listed because you
could meet one but not others. In this case, it's easy to imagine
that there *is* hardware to run it on, but nobody's ponied up the
hardware for the extra buildd(s) and developer machines.
If there was an arch that was five times more popular than powerpc, and
no one was able to just donate boxes, I'd expect we'd buy some. We'd
already need to have /some/, just to have built the packages that people
are downloading.
The requirements aren't meant to be orthogonal, nor are they meant to be
so permanent that they won't get changed even if really bizarre
circumstances occur. They're meant to be the general gist of what to
expect. If you'd rather, you can consider many of them to be "This is
why RM/DSA would veto an arch".
So in my scenario, somebody then does pony up the necessary
hardware. Think about *any* new port.
First step is to port the kernel and toolchain; or finish developing
your new OS so its usable.
Then get some early adopters to use it, and some people to continue
working on it.
Then you get into SCC as a non-release arch. You do autobuilding and
releases and whatever else as you see fit.
Then you start taking over the world.
Eventually you become reasonably popular and competent and trouble free,
and the release team says "we love you, we love you, please let us have
your babies", and start producing testing/stable releases for you.
You then continue taking over the world.
Soon everyone loves you, and you get a huge userbase, and hit 10% of
i386+amd64 downloads or five times powerpc's current userbase or so, and
say "I wanna be on ftp.d.o!!" Then you get moved across over a month or
so, and become a "tier-1" arch. Yay you.
Then you finish taking over the world, and i386 and amd64 move to scc
when they drop below 10% of your downloads and you declare yourself
Grand Tyrant of Sol and Related Planets for Life and everyone lives
happily ever after.
There are other requirements at each of those steps of course, but
that's the very general idea.
Not everything happens at
once; there is one day when there is only one buildd, and another day
when there are three and two machines to donate as developer
machines. What I'm trying to get clear in my head is what the
procedure is for such new ports.
Even more generally: do your best, ask what's next, rinse, repeat.
The announcement lists i386, powerpc, ia64, and amd64 as the expected
set. If that's not accurate, it would be very nice to know now.
They're the expected release architectures, but ia64 and powerpc are
still scc architectures: they have more taking over the world to do yet.
Cheers,
aj
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