Re: StarlingX looking at alternatives to CentOS

[Saul Wold <Saul.Wold@windriver.com>]

Paul, thanks for this, more below about build tools

On 1/15/21 7:25 PM, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 6:30 PM Saul Wold wrote:
>
> > I am a member of the StarlingX Community [0], which is a cloud
> > infrastructure stack that presents Kubernetes, containerized OpenStack
> > along with a grouping (flock) of management tools.
>
> Please note that Debian bullseye has packages for Kubernetes and
> OpenStack, I expect those teams would welcome help maintaining them.
>
> > StarlingX uses a custom kernel and patches some userspace with a custom
> > build system based around mock and rpmbuild.
>
> Please consider getting your Linux kernel patches included upstream,
> there are a lot of advantages to that.
>
> https://kernelnewbies.org/UpstreamMerge
>
> Some of the other aspects of your custom kernel might be useful to
> apply to the Debian Linux kernel build.
>
> Please send your userspace patches upstream too.
>
> I'd encourage you to switch to a non-custom build system too, I expect
> one of the many existing ones would suit your needs.
>
> > We would like to contribute to the Debian eco-system as well of course.
>
> There are lots of ways to help Debian, please especially note the ways
> organisations can help Debian at the end of this page:
>
> https://www.debian.org/intro/help
>
> The how-can-i-help tool can point out more specific ways to help:
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/how-can-i-help
>
> > Our concerns have to do with
> > 1) Build Tooling
> > We have been looking at pbuilder and debbuild, ,but want to understand
> > if there are automated building scripts (I did find buildd).
>
> Debian uses wanna-build for management of builds and sbuild for running
> individual builds.
>
> https://buildd.debian.org/
> https://salsa.debian.org/wb-team/
>
> There are many other options for this and the derivatives census lists
> info about what each derivative uses.
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/SystemBuildTools
> https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusFull?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=title%3ADerivatives%2FCensus%2F+regex%3A%5B%5E%23%5D%5Cs%5C*%5CsBuild%5Cstools.%5Cs%5B%5E%2F%5D&fullsearch=Text
I have been actively looking at these pages, but have not set anything 
up around creating a wanna-build or sbuild (yet).

It's not clear to me how these tools handle dependencies between 
packages when building packages from source, such as building a library 
package that an userspace package might depend on.

I come from the OpenEmbedded/Yocto Project space where we have bitbake 
that parses the recipe files and then computes dependencies between 
tasks and packages automagically.

Thanks
  Sau!

> > 3) Status of Bullseye
> > Again I have seen the release pages.
>
> The best way to find out the status of bullseye for your use cases is
> to install, run and test it. Of course it will be fluctuating until the
> final freeze before the release.
>
> > 5) lots of other considerations around patching userspace, adding
> > missing packages to the debian ecosystem, creating custom repos (either
> > with DAK or repropro).
>
> There are many different tools for apt repos and the derivatives census
> lists info about what each derivative uses, reprepro is popular.
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/DebianRepository/Setup
> https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/CensusFull?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=title%3ADerivatives%2FCensus%2F+regex%3A%5B%5E%23%5D%5Cs%5C*%5CsArchive%5Cstool.%5Cs%5B%5E%2F%5D&fullsearch=Text
>
> > 6) other unknowns of transitioning from CentOS -> Debian
>
> Please take a look at the Debian derivatives guidelines:
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Guidelines
>
> Debian jargon may differ to CentOS, check out our glossary:
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/Glossary

--
Sau!