Fedora Board Recap 2008-JUL-15

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 15:54 -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote:
> On Thursday 17 July 2008, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:21 AM, John Poelstra <poelstra at redhat.com> wrote:
> > > == Mingw ==
> >
> > I'm going to editorialize a little and reorder the bullets in doing so.
> 
> > > * Board supports such an effort as long as it is self contained and
> > > separated from the main package respository
> > >
> > > ** Leave technical details and implementation to FESCo
> > >
> > >From a broad Project policy perspective we think that cross-compiling
> >
> > is a new and different enough concept to separated out from the main
> > repository offering as a new subproject endeavor.  How exactly that is
> > done, is something we want FESCo to take up.  The Board is
> > deliberately avoiding making specific implementation choices, but we
> > did talk through enough of the possibilities so I was confident that
> > this can be implemented without asking anyone to do the impossible
> > with the available infrastructure.
> I would assume the only thing being considered for inclusion here is the 
> compiler tool chain to enable people to cross build apps for windows,
Agreed, + a couple of "free" applications that should be added to be
used as testsuites.

>  I see it 
> no different to the current arm cross compiling toolkit.
Agreed.

>   and of course if we 
> can only use binary blobs for part of it its not ever going to be acceptable 
> in fedora.
Emphasize on _can_ (i.e. if feasible, do so, if not don't be forced to),
because wrt. cross-toolchains

* it doesn't always make sense to build everything from scratch/source

* bootstrapping cross-toolchains may be difficult if not impossible
without (at least temporarily) inserting binary blobs, due to them offen
suffering from circular dependencies.

>    are you proposing we create software builds for windows?
No.

> > If FESCo members or mingw SIG members need clarification as to what is
> > being asked of them, do not hesitate to respond.
> Id like clarification on what you think you are doing.  to me its seems all you 
> are doing is making noise.
?!? urgh, ... yes, there is a lot of noise on this topic.

I feel a lot of people don't want to comprehend that cross-toolchains
are ordinary (Fedora-)native applications and do not need any special
treatment besides the spots where they collide with current policies.

That said, the mingw-toolset is not any different from any arbitrary
other cross-toolchain, except that its target platform is windows and
not some other less popular OS.

Ralf