Help with building packages on non-i386 architectures

[Gérard Milmeister]

Most people (me included) here submitting and maintaining packages
only have access to one architecture to test on, usually i386.
Therefore, even if a package finishes building on other architecture,
there is often no-one to make minimal tests, and thus possibly
broken packages make into the repositories.
More often however, packages don't build at all on ppc or x86_64,
and it is difficult to find out what to do about, since one has
no expertise on these architectures. The last solution is often
to simple ExcludeArch in the spec file.
One way to improve this situation is to have group of people having
experience with ppc and x86_64, that can be consulted when a package
fails to build, and the cause is not clear.
Currently people sometimes submit a package to build system to see if
it builds on all architectures, then iteratively modify and resubmit,
until it finally builds (or not). A testing build server would also be
useful, where one could submit a package for build (and possibly for
only one architecture) that will not add to repo after success. Also
building without bumping the release tag and tagging in CVS would make
it easier for testing.

What do you think?
-- 
Gérard Milmeister
Langackerstrasse 49
CH-8057 Zürich