Re: Are mails sent to xxxx <at> buildd.debian.org sent to /dev/null ?
On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 11:34:55PM +0100, Ingo Juergensmann wrote:
> Although the problem is well known and the solution is obvious, nobody seems
> to have the guts to make a change (or even to speak about it).
Let's have a discussion about reducing our number of architectures.
Attempting to support several thousand binary packages on a dozen
architectures across three release flavours imposes a large cost (see e.g.
Joey Hess' recent blogging about the increased sysadmin work he has to do so
that he can test d-installer).
So we know the costs. Can we quantify the benefits?
In http://blog.bofh.it/id_66, Marco showed these numbers of downloads at the
Italian site:
architecture files downloaded
i386 1285422
all 504789
powerpc 17754
ia64 10111
sparc 3336
arm 850
alpha 507
hppa 204
mipsel 91
m68k 15
mips 7
s390 4
total 1823090
AFAIK this data has not been refuted.
Clearly, for informed decision we'd need more data, from more hosts and over
longer periods.
But it would be nice if we based this discussion on /measurable usage/ of
Debian to complement the costs with actual benefits -- as opposed to
hypotheticals (such as compiling thousands of packages for arches without
actual users).
As it stands, 4 downloads for s390 appear somewhat disproportionate to
1,285,422 for i386.
Dirk
--
If you don't go with R now, you will someday.
-- David Kane on r-sig-finance, 30 Nov 2004
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