[Raspbian-devel] Raspberry Pi build farm

[peter green]

Robie Basak wrote:
> Interested to see
> http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-raspberry-pi-build-cluster-for-ubuntu
>   
MMM
> Raspbian already does exactly what want to do, but for Debian. You could
> probably sync with them on techniques, since I think it'd be pretty much
> identical for you except that you'd get your source packages from Ubuntu
> instead of Debian. Perhaps even share the build farm? I think they use
> other ARM builders though - not Raspberry Pi. You can use ARMv7 but just
> use a toolchain that defaults to building for ARMv6.
>   
Just to let you know we at raspbian do not build on Pis for several reasons.

1: We bootstrapped the port by "working downwards" from debian armhf. 
That meant that during the bootstrap process we needed machines that 
could run armv7 code.
2: Pi's have no good storage interfaces. SD cards SERIOUSLY SUCK at 
random writes and are therefore basically a nonstarter for buildd swap 
and scratch space. USB can work ok sometimes but it doesn't have the 
worlds best reputation for either performance or stability. Trying to 
use the USB based ethernet on the Pi will probablly be even worse than 
using a USB hard drive. Your plan does not seem to address what you plan 
to do about build swap and scratch space.
3: Pi's are SERIOUSLY short on ram. Some of the more bloated packages 
take days to link with 1GB of ram (and a load of swap on a SATA hard 
drive), I dread to think how long they would take with half or a quarter 
of a gig. We insisted on at least 2GB for our second generation of 
autobuilders for a reason (we would have liked more but prices on arm 
hardware with more than 2GB of ram are crazy high). Unfortunately some 
of those bloated packages are also critical parts of the dependency web.
4: Pi's were not readilly available when we started the project (it's 
kinda crazy actually, Mike and I started the project before either of us 
owned a Pi).

If your goal is to produce a sustainable port with timely updates then I 
would strongly reccomend getting yourself a smaller number of faster arm 
boards with 2GB of ram and hard drives. We use wandboard quads for 
raspbian jessie, there may be faster options out there (for example the 
odriod XU) but as yet they seem to be relatively unproven.
> One of the Raspbian guys who does much of the porting work is local to
> Manchester. His name's Peter Green.
>   
Honestly there has been virtually no "real porting", it's mostly things 
like hacking arround stupid build failures or packages that assume armv7 
or inconsistencies in the current dependency web (both binary and build).
> I thought it would be useful to connect you all, so I've copied in Ben,
> Liz and Peter.
Can you please not use my university email address for such purposes, I 
know I accidently send stuff from it sometimes but i'd rather not have 
it clogged up with stuff like this.