Re: [Ltib] Idea: Binary lpp pool?

[Stuart Hughes]

Hi Svein,

I have thought of doing this and to some extent it already exists within 
an instance of LTIB.

The problem with a global/site set of binary rpms is that they'd need to 
be distinguished by configuration.  For example, even if are working on 
platform X, if we change the toolchain, or even its toolchain C flags 
the binary rpms would need to be stored somewhere else.  This leads to a 
large storage requirement and good tracking on what configuration 
changes would require a different storage place for a set of rpms.  Even 
if you take care of this you then have the problem of package 
configuration dependencies.  For example packages that build later use 
configure to determine what they may include.   So you may build the 
same package with different capabilities depending on what is already 
configured in the system.

To help the issue you face LTIB does cache rpms within an instance.  If 
you cat rpm/RPMS/.config you'll see that a fingerprint is made for a set 
of rpms, if you change for example the toolchain, LTIB will save the old 
rpms but insist on building the new set (for the new toolchain), if you 
swap back though it will be fast as the rpms for the previous 
toolchain(s) have been saved.  Additionally ccache is enabled which 
helps speed up (per-user) builds.

So yes its been considered but I think I narrowly fall down on the side 
of not doing it for now (beyond what is already there).

Regards, Stuart

Svein Seldal wrote:
> Hi
>
> Has it at any point been considered to make a pool from the binary 
> packages (rpm's) -- similar to the lpp but for binaries?
>
> I notice that when I compile ltib, it usually involves building the same 
> packages over and over again. (Because I have multiple ltib trees to 
> test different things. Same applies to all of the users on our build 
> server. Since all target the same HW, the same binary packages will be 
> built many times over.)
>
> What if there were a functionality to release a binary package (ltib -m 
> binrelease) which would move the package to a lpp_bin/ of some kind. 
> When ltib is asked to install a package, say hotplug, it will check if 
> it is present in the lpp_bin/ copy it to your local rpm/ directory.
>
> Of course I understand you can't do that for packages which you are 
> working on or can configure individually (like kernel and busybox), but 
> for a majority of packages this would probably work.
>
>
> - Svein