Hi all, > On Freitag, 10. Juni 2011 at 19:26, Stefan Schaeckeler wrote: > > > That makes me wonder how packages and patches are tested. Are committers > > only testing them on their plattform and commit if they work there? > seems so > > > > Wouldn't it make sense to ask (or force?) committers to test packages and > > patches in VMs for operating systems that are easy to set up such as intel > > linux and intel open solaris? > In theory â?? yes. In practice, I don't think so. > Which platforms should be the "core"? Details. Guess, besides NetBSD, perhaps Dragonfly, one intel Linux distribution (=> likely to work on many other linux distributions), intel open solaris (=> likely to work on sparc solaris). > What about software that just doesn't work on all platforms, because > it needs to be ported? But maybe just works on some platforms? That should be explictly set with ONLY_FOR_PLATFORMS=..... > IMHO you can not require testing on all the pkgsrc platforms, > nothing would ever get done. Porting something like Firefox is a > hell of a lot of work, for every single platform. Things that work at one point in time randomly break later on non-NetBSD. I assume that, if the committer knows that a new patch breaks some plattforms, he will often instantly be able to easily fix it. I really would love to see *such* cases to be cought. When we come back to firefox, the build error message is the same as 1 1/2 years ago. > I use pkgsrc on DragonFly, and I've come across a few places where > programs don't work. I've generally found that any fixes I submitted > through the PR system have been warmly welcomed, which is really > encouraging. Not all my sparc/solaris patches are accepted :P > On the other hand, in very many instances software that has probably > not been tested on DFly by the maintainers worked out of the box. .. because Dragonfly is very close to NetBSD? > So from this experience, I'd rather have packages in pkgsrc that may or may > not work on non-NetBSD platforms than only packages guaranteed to work > everywhere. > Of course, if it *is* possible to test on other platforms before committing > that is very desirable, and everyone encountering portability problems is > dearly encouraged to fix them and submit the fixes. > > How about setting up a build farm of various plattforms > > that would be cool! That would make a great Google Summer of Code project :) > > and require commits to successfully build on these machines? > > hmm, I'd say: no. maybe "successfully on those it built before, > unless there is good reason"? Ok, that's perhaps too demanding. Stefan -- Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. Kirk: Then it's of external origin? Spock: Affirmative. Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.