Re: How should stalin be handled on slower architectures?
Florian Weimer dijo [Thu, Sep 23, 2004 at 01:42:36PM +0200]:
> > Are we at the point yet where emulating a MIPS or m68k on a cheap,
> > fast machine will go faster than the original hardware?
> (...)
> Efficient emulation has significant costs: somebody has to write the
> emulator. Do you propose that Debian licenses a proprietary emulator
> for its buildds? Writing an emulator (or optimizing an existing one)
> is an atypical task because free software does hardly benefit from it.
But for some architectures we do already have the emulators
working. And they are quite popular and useful.
> > Maybe the next m68k or mips buildds might actually an i386...
>
> cross-compilation is a way to achieve that. There's a main advantage
> over emulation: fixing packages distributes the work load evenly among
> package maintainers (especially once there's a fakeroot patch to
> emulate a cross-compilation environment). Writing and maintaining an
> emulator is a more centralized task.
On the other hand, I usually include -and encourage other people to
include- tests in my packages (i.e., 'make test' in a Perl module will
test it works as it should). If we were to switch to cross-compiling
environments, we would be unable to run the tests. Most packages would
FTBFS as they would require running a foreign binary, and the overall
quality of the archive would be decreased.
> We need cross-compilation for other reasons as well: currently, there
> is too little redundancy among the trusted buildds for security
> updates. One failed buildd delays security updates for the whole
> distribution.
On this point, I do agree... But I am still not convinced that
cross-compilation is the way to go.
Greetings,
--
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.org - (+52-55)1451-2244 / 5554-9450
PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
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