RFC: Mass rebuild of Fedora Extras before FC5 and how to handle orphaned packges for FC5

[Josh Boyer]

> Am Sonntag, den 15.01.2006, 16:13 -0600 schrieb Josh Boyer:
>> On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 15:27 -0500, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>> > On 1/15/06, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at jdub.homelinux.org> wrote:
>> > > 1) Create a FE5 blocker bug.
>
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=FE5Target
>
> We probably should have some more:
>
> FE5Target-x86-64
> FE5Target-ppc
> FE5Target-orphaned

Agreed.


>> > > 2) Open a rebuild bug for every package in devel and add it to #1.
>
> /me wonders how to create more then 1300 bugs

Well _that_ would have to be scripted.  :)

>
>> > > 3) Maintainers rebuild their packages, fixing issues as they
>> encounter
>> > > them.
>> > > 4) Close the bugs as they are completed.
>> >
>> > And what happens if maintainers fail to kick off rebuilds?  Or there
>>
>> We'd be able to tell because their bugs would still be open.  That would
>> allow others to help out in those situations.
>
> I just added the question
>
> What happens if a package has a official maintainer, but does not
> rebuild his packages in (let's say) 10 days after the official mass
> rebuild was proclaimed?
>
> to
> http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Schedule/MassRebuildFC5

Another developer steps in and does it, pointing back to the bug comment
they made stating why.

>
>> > some sort of cascade such that an underlying dependancy package needs
>> > to be rebuilt at the same time as another package but package A and
>> > package B are maintained by different people?
>>
>> Bugzilla has fields to allow this.  Package maintainers should know what
>> their packages depend on.  Mark package B's bug as being blocked by A's.
>
> That's going to be fun. I suspect that won't work, but maybe I'm wrong.

To clarify, I see this as a manual step each maintainer _could_ do.  A
maintainer needs to know what their packages depend on.  If they want to
indicate that in bugzilla, it's possible.


>> Seriously, if we can get a few people to help drive and work through a
>> mass rebuild then I'm all for it.  I'll even help.  But I still think it
>> should be tracked in bugzilla whether or not a single person is doing it
>> or each maintainer.  That way, if changes _are_ needed and a maintainer
>> is MIA for some reason, we at least have some history of what happened
>> and where the problems were.
>
> If the solution is found how to create all those bugs for all packages
> it might work.
>
> Another idea: Tell everybody to rebuild. Wait a week. Fill bugs for all
> packages that dind't get rebuild. Wait a week. If the maintainers didn't
> do anything in between it can be rebuild by a special mass rebuild task
> force. If it fails - fix it or drop it before FC5.

That would work too.  Less overhead, but less tracking too.

As others have said though, just rebuilding doesn't always help things. 
In some cases, a rebuild will succeed but the package will fail to work. 
In other cases, it would be a waste of time if the maintainer was planning
on doing an update anyway [1].  For the cases where nobody rebuilds, then
sure a special mass rebuild might work.

In both proposals though, I think it would be good to have a couple people
try to really drive this thing.  Whether it be doing the automated mass
rebuild, or herding the cats^H^H^H^H maintainers through it.

josh

[1] Unless we are talking about a _freeze_ of FE5.  To my knowledge we
aren't, so an update in the middle of all this is perfectly possible as FE
is a rolling release.