On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Miloslav Trmač (mitr@xxxxxxxx) said:
>> Actually, even more generally - why a self-hosting Base at all? It
>> would clearly be absurd for the kernel to be self-hosting, and clearly
>> we want "the Fedora universe" to be self-hosting. Why is it
>> worthwhile to have Base self-hosting?
>
> Well, if we want 'the Fedora universe' to be self-hosting, where should
> the compiler portion that implements the bottom layer of that live?
>
> If it doesn't make sense in Cloud (definitely not), Server (maybe), or
> Workstation (maybe)... then that either leaves Base, or a world where you're
> building Base (and WS, and Server, and Cloud) using tools from 'the
> universe' that itself is trying to build on Base.
I wouldn't say a compiler makes much sense for Server; perhaps for
Workstation but that's only because our Workstation is somewhat
special.
Really I'd be fine with a compiler in the bigger universe - or,
perhaps (NOT actually proposing this, we coordinating between the WGs
already requires enough work) in a "development tools" product.
> e.g., if base defines & standardizes on the minimal set of build packages,
> that Server/WS/Cloud can then use to build themselves (or selectively
> override), and the universe can then use (or selectively override), it
> creates a clean heirarchy.
It's not obvious to me that product installation dependencies (Cloud
requires Base) need to have any relationship with product creation
dependencies (e.g. Base may be built on a build system which is
actually a Server running Cloud images, or a Base package may require
a Cloud image or a Server-contained database server for its test
suite).
Yes, there is some value in having as few loops in the build order as
possible, to allow new platform bringup, but that should be very rare
and, in any case, I'd guess (having no data - what's the ARM
experience?) the packaging effort is dwarfed by the effort required to
port the tool chain.
> If the build environment instead lives in the Universe, and all of Base, and
> Server/WS/Cloud use it... that makes Fedora still (in some respects) one big
> package repo, and the products more like spins than actual separate products.
>From the users point of view, I can't see that: Microsoft Office is
not a less separate product just because it doesn't ship Visual
Studio. Yes, this would make the three products not three "Linux
distributions" as we traditionally think of them; I think that's fine.
Mirek
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