ppc buildserver problem

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 16:58 +0200, Joost van der Sluis wrote:
> > > the ppc buildsystem fails in compiling fpc. The pre-compiled binary
> > > gives a segfault. I asked someone on IRC to try to build the fpc-rpm on
> > > a old ppc, and there it works. (He used Debian Unstable, though)
> > > 
> > > Can someone give me some more information about what kind of powerpc the
> > > buildsystem has?
> > 
> > Not a PowerPC at all :)  It's got a couple of these:
> > 
> > cpu             : POWER5 (gr)
> > clock           : 1655.992000MHz
> 
> > If you've got altivec or something like that compiled in, you're hosed.
> > What's using a precompiled binary anyway?  That seems wrong, for the
> > exact reasons this job failed.
> 
> fpc is a compiler. It has to be build (bootstrapped) by itself, or an
> older version of itself. So the first time it needs a 'seed' to get it
> into the buildsystem. That's why there is a binary.
> 
> But according to some other fpc-developers fpc doesn't run on a Power5
> machine. Not only for the lack of Altivec (VMX) but also for some other
> things. (you also can't compile a version which does)
> 
> And the changes that we'll be able to fix that are very slim, since
> those machines aren't cheap...
> 
> > In any case, this is an interesting topic, since the build machines,
> > while blazingly fast, don't support Altivec, which most Fedora PPC users
> > have.  I'm not sure how to even differentiate between those jobs needing
> > Altivec (so they might go to a capable machine) and those jobs not
> > requiring it (so they could go to the POWER5).
> 
> Well, fpc _does_ run on powerpc, but not on power. How should I handle
> this?

Note that there are accessible POWER machines around, namely two that
were used for the Linux on POWER challenge this summer.  One is in
Portland, OR and another is in Germany.  You can email the admins to get
accounts on either, so maybe upstream could look into that?

The other option is to get Seth to add his (really really slow) G4 back
into the mix and we figure out some way to tie certain packages to the
G4.  Seth?

Dan