[ewg] Re: [ofa-general] OFED 1.2 Feb-26 meeting summary

[Doug Ledford]

On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 23:35 +0200, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > > 2. *NOT AN MPI ISSUE*: how the RPMs are built is Bad(tm).  Not  
> > > deleting the buildroot is Bad; munging %build into %install is  
> > > Bad; ...etc.  This needs to change.  4 choices jump to mind:
> > > 
> > >     a. Keep the same scheme.  Ick.
> > >     b. Install while we build (i.e., the normal way to build a pile  
> > > of interdependent RPMs)
> > >     c. Use chroot (Red Hat does this in their internal setup, for  
> > > example)
> > >     d. Only distribute binary RPMs for supported platforms; source is  
> > > available for those who want it.
> > 
> > d. is the normal route for anyone wanting to provide a known working
> > environment.  Building locally is fraught with perils related to custom
> > compilers, custom core libraries, and other things that the EWG can't
> > control and can't realistically support.
> 
> I don't think d is realistic simply because OFED is not redhat, it needs to be
> distribution agnostic.

So?  You test on Red Hat and SuSE, you can easily enough build RPMs for
each.  Being agnostic does not mean you have to ship source, it's
perfectly acceptable/possible to make RPMs for different targets.

>   In our experience people *want* to use custom compilers,
> custom core libraries etc.

Really?  Then why have people been on me so hard to create official Red
Hat RPMs that are fully supported?  If they *wanted* to build their own
infrastructure for using InfiniBand and other RDMA protocols, they
wouldn't care what Red Hat does in regards to that.  They want
compilers/libs *for their apps*.  That might necessitate a few libraries
get rebuilt with that custom compiler too, but anything that doesn't
*have* to be done for their app/compiler choice to work, they don't
*want* to do, they want someone like Red Hat, or the EWG, to handle the
rest for them.

> Mostly things work smoothly. We can and do support this.

Hehehe, OK, so your support policy is "If it works great, if not, oh
well?"  They don't let me implement that kind of support policy here.
It *has* to work.  Mostly isn't allowed.

-- 
Doug Ledford <dledford at redhat.com>
              GPG KeyID: CFBFF194
              http://people.redhat.com/dledford

Infiniband specific RPMs available at
              http://people.redhat.com/dledford/Infiniband
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