On Sunday, 02 March 2008 at 14:59, David Woodhouse wrote: > The PPC64 build hosts (which also build ppc32 packages) recently > switched to RHEL5, and hence have 64KiB page size. > > This is permitted by the PPC ABI, just as it is by the x86_64 ABI, and > works perfectly well for almost everything. > > Occasionally, however, it shows up some bugs in packages. This week, it > found bug #435337, which is a generic bug and not really ppc-specific -- > although I won't enter the debate on whether it's a glibc bug or a bug > with the programs which 'naively' expect pthread_attr_setstacksize() to > actually set the stack size to the number they provide. > > However, despite the fact that the majority of build failures on PPC > actually demonstrate _generic_ bugs and not arch-specific bugs at all, > some packagers don't bother to look -- they prefer to just exclude the > 'offending' architecture and move on without checking to see what the > problem is. And mutter to themselves that PPC is 'painful', despite the > fact that it's helping to improve the quality of Fedora overall by > finding their generic bugs. Primarily for that reason, I'm tempted to > switch the PPC builders back to 4KiB pages. > > I'm not sure it's the right thing to do though -- there are arguments on > either side. > > For 4KiB pages: > - Makes life 'easier' for PPC builds, to stop people whining about it > finding their bugs for them. > - Consistent with what we actually ship in Fedora. -1 Packagers' lack of time or laziness is not a good excuse. If they can't fix it, they should seek help either from the PPC SIG or upstream. > For 64KiB pages: > - Finds real bugs > - Consistent with what will be shipped for RHEL. +1, for the reasons you specified below. > Note that although some of us might not care so much about RHEL, the > point about consistency in that case is stronger -- because programs > _built_ with 64KiB pages are almost always going to work when run with > 4KiB pages, but the other way round is not so frequently true. > > I'm concerned that switching back to 4KiB pages is just papering over > real bugs to make life easier for PPC folks. I suspect that what I > should _actually_ do is keep it 64KiB, brazen it out and LART people who > just exclude ppc builds without actually looking at the problem for > themselves. But I'm lazy too... maybe we should switch the x86_64 > builders to 64KiB instead? :) I'm game. ;) Regards, R. -- Fedora contributor http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DominikMierzejewski Livna contributor http://rpm.livna.org MPlayer developer http://mplayerhq.hu "Faith manages." -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations" -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
