Bug#365349: Intermediate space requirements

[John Wright <jsw@debian.org>]

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 02:28:46PM +0200, Bastian Blank wrote:
> Hi folks
> 
> I did some checks on the intermediate space requirements, especially the
> build directory and ccache dirs. The ability to use ccache is currently
> the limiting factor to do the snapshots in the current fashion. All
> checks are done with the default powerpc64 image.
> 
> No debugging info:
> - build directory: 300MiB
> - ccache: 50MiB
> Full debugging info
> - build directory: >> 2GiB
> - ccache: 400MiB
> Only image debugging info:
> - build directory: 1,6GiB
> - ccache: 110MiB
> 
> Building with full debugging would push the linux-2.6 package right on
> top of the space requirements list by effectively using factor 10 of the
> current space. I'm unsure if the normal buildd-infrastructure could hold
> up to this.
> 
> Building only the image with debugging information, which should be
> enough for most usage, would be an option, as it only takes about factor
> five.[1]

Since we build so much of the kernel as modules, I think it's much
better if we can provide debug info for modules as well.

Going through the buildd's listed at db.debian.org, I didn't see many
machines with less than 36 GiB of disk space.  Yes, 2 GiB is quite a lot
of space, but I don't see that it would overload the buildd
infrastructure.  Worst case, if there are buildds that don't have enough
space to build the kernel, they could be configured not to take the
linux-2.6 package, leaving it for buildds that do have the space.  (Of
course, this depends on at least one buildd per architecture having
enough space.)

> [1]: Even this would currently make it impossible to build snapshots in
> the current setup, because the used machine have no additional free
> space.

Perhaps this can happen on Debian hardware as Lucas suggests?  Even if
not, I would be willing to donate disks if it meant we could have debug
info for Debian kernels. :)

-- 
John Wright <jsw@debian.org>