On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 01:13:12PM +0100, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote: > Hi Arjan, > > > > I just read about Red Hat ABE (Application Build Environment) which > > > seems to be something similar to mach. > > > > the goals are very similar to mach, but mach uses apt which made it not > > suitable as basis for the ABE > > I have to bite here :) > > Given that > a) mach has been used by some people over some time; > b) people working on mach have repeatedly tried to discuss with Red Hat > and said "hey, we'd like to work with you on a build system to be used > by all", as part of the "community" project that is Fedora; but no > attempts were made from Red Hat to unify forces; > c) nothing more was ever offered as negative feedback on mach than "it > uses apt" (a fact that is easily changeable, obviously); > d) you could easily have asked "hey, can't mach be made to not use apt, > but do (insert random feature you would like)" > > why did the "NIH" syndrome that Red Hat sometimes displays wins out over > the desire to involve the community in the "community" project ? mach has a different goal than the ABE. Add the apt/yum use of mach (which for the goal mach has, is perfectly fine) and I made the call that using mach for the ABE was not a real option. You call it NIH. Shrug. I started out by looking at mach to see if it could be adjusted, but it didn't look like it could be without compromising what mach was made for. > I realize that you probably don't care, and that you have a job to do, > and it's already hard enough as it is, and sometimes it's just easier to > Do Your Own Thing to Get The Job Done. And this is very much not a > personal flame at you, just a flame at Red Hat in general. In this case it's very much a case of different goals of different tools. They somewhat look the same (and that's why I started by looking at mach) but they really are not. (and the ABE you see today is not the ABE in the projected roadmap) For a fedora buildsystem, mach is 100x better than the ABE will ever be, and I really would suggest anyone here to use mach if they want to build packages for fedora.
