redhat abe

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 01:13:12PM +0100, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> Hi Arjan,
> 
> > > I just read about Red Hat ABE (Application Build Environment) which
> > > seems to be something similar to mach.
> > 
> > the goals are very similar to mach, but mach uses apt which made it not
> > suitable as basis for the ABE
> 
> I have to bite here :)
> 
> Given that
> a) mach has been used by some people over some time;
> b) people working on mach have repeatedly tried to discuss with Red Hat
> and said "hey, we'd like to work with you on a build system to be used
> by all", as part of the "community" project that is Fedora; but no
> attempts were made from Red Hat to unify forces;
> c) nothing more was ever offered as negative feedback on mach than "it
> uses apt" (a fact that is easily changeable, obviously);
> d) you could easily have asked "hey, can't mach be made to not use apt,
> but do (insert random feature you would like)"
> 
> why did the "NIH" syndrome that Red Hat sometimes displays wins out over
> the desire to involve the community in the "community" project ?

mach has a different goal than the ABE. Add the apt/yum use of mach (which
for the goal mach has, is perfectly fine) and I made the call that using mach
for the ABE was not a real option. You call it NIH. Shrug. I started out by
looking at mach to see if it could be adjusted, but it didn't look like it
could be without compromising what mach was made for. 

> I realize that you probably don't care, and that you have a job to do,
> and it's already hard enough as it is, and sometimes it's just easier to
> Do Your Own Thing to Get The Job Done.  And this is very much not a
> personal flame at you, just a flame at Red Hat in general.

In this case it's very much a case of different goals of different tools.
They somewhat look the same (and that's why I started by looking at mach)
but they really are not. (and the ABE you see today is not the ABE in the
projected roadmap)

For a fedora buildsystem, mach is 100x better than the ABE will ever be, and
I really would suggest anyone here to use mach if they want to build
packages for fedora.