Re: Is the gcc-3_3-branch creation still on target?

[Joe Buck <Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com>]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 09:40:59PM +0100, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> > I'd favour having not ICEing on the 8000 packages be included in the
> > application testing in the release criteria (rather than just the handful
> > of software currently there).  How long does it take to do a build of 8000
> > packages, and could there be an automatic regression tester for mainline
> > doing those tests (and reporting regressions since last test to
> > gcc-regression - ideally with .i files to reproduce the failures)?

David O'Brien writes:
> I spoke with our package builder about this.  He says it takes 24 hours
> with a cluster of 8 build machines (pentium-III/800).

That works out to 86.4 sec/package if each machine builds 1000 packages.
Seems a bit on the slow side, but quite possible.

> With all the activities he already does; build packages for FreeBSD/4.x;
> for FreeBSD/5.x; experimental runs on both versions to flush out
> upgrading core packages like gtk, iconv, gettext, etc... there is little
> bandwidth on his time to try experimental compilers. :-(

It seems that the main bottleneck is availability of machine time, as once
the build process is set up, it can just be fired off.

Unfortunately, if no volunteers can be found for such tasks, we tend to
find these things out the hard way.  You say you want to go to 3.3-pre
because you're not satisfied with 3.2's quality, but there's no magic
that's going to make 3.3 better, other than people building 8000 packages
with "experimental compilers" (whether from the 3.2 or the 3.3 branch).
I'd rather try to persuade people to put in the resources to bang on what
will become 3.2.1.