On Fri, Dec 2, 2022 at 10:30 PM Adam Williamson <adamwill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So there's this CI ticket ATM[0] about whether the environment in which
CI tests are run should or should not include and update from the
'buildroot' repo, which contains both:
1. Packages that have been pushed stable since the last time a compose
succeeded (for Rawhide that's a Rawhide compose, for Branched it's a
Branched compose, for stable releases it's an updates compose)
2. Packages that have active buildroot overrides
Thinking about this reminded me again why buildroot overrides are such
a bad idea:
https://pagure.io/fedora-ci/general/issue/376#comment-830638
Buildroot overrides have unpredictable consequences for builds, updates
*and* tests. I really feel like we should consider disallowing them and
requiring all rebases to be done using side tags. Side tags are a
*much* better design that avoids the problem of packages unexpectedly
being built against a buildroot override somebody else submitted, and
means test systems aren't stuck in a bind of not really knowing for
sure what other packages should be installed when testing any given
package.
What does everyone else think? Has the time come? Or is there more we
need to do to make side tags usable for all cases before getting rid of
overrides?
I would say that side tags are almost always the correct tool for ABI rebuilds. I imagine people who submit global buildroot overrides to handle a library soname bump are almost always doing it because they haven't learned the "new" ways of doing it.
I'd go as far as to say that anyone who does ABI rebuilds using global buildroot overrides are doing it wrong.
However, having said that, I also find buildroot overrides useful. Some examples:
1) Fedora is in freeze. GNOME has gotten a Freeze Exception to pull a new version through the freeze, but that includes a library soname bump.
What I would do in that case is submit the GNOME megaupdate to Bodhi, and also submit the library as a buildroot override to ensure that nothing can build against the old soname -- I am fairly confident that the GNOME megaupdate, together with the soname bump makes it to stable first.
2) I need to do a container build and include a new CVE fix (as it's critical and we need to get fixes out ASAP), but that package build to include in the container is only in updates-testing.
What I'd do in this case is to submit a buildroot override because everything that's overridden gets included in container builds. After my container build is done I'd expire the buildroot override.
3) We've had some "fun" issues with sysprof symbols leaking out from the GTK stack into other libraries consuming it. This has caused subtle ABI issues and when working on a fix and to make sure no package can build against the "wrong" GTK version, I've used buildroot overrides.
4) Compiler issues, with compilers producing broken code.
To test the fixes and make sure packages start using the new fixed versions ASAP, a buildroot override is often useful.
I could continue with the list but I think you get my point that there are some cases where it's useful :) However I'd never use buildroot overrides for soname bump rebuilds; that's what side tags are good for.
Maybe doing occasional blog posts and teaching maintainers how to do multi package updates would be helpful? Not sure what else we could do to help improve the situation here.
--
Kalev
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