[Mageia-dev] Will this work for a build system?

Mon Sep 27 03:32:55 CEST 2010

Giuseppe Ghibò wrote:
+> The most difficult things IMHO would be building from the same
+> syncronized data. In that case you might choose a master server and
+> several mirrors. The master might have multiple internet access points
+> (e.g. from two providers) and will be the only one who might receive
+> svn commits. Or a model without a master, I guess inspiring to a model
+> what UseNET is (was), I think a lot more complicate. But in that case
+> you have two direction of feeding and if two libraries are submitted
+> in different user in nearest time, you need a system to check for
+> coerency and set alarms in some cases.
+>
+> IMHO one of the building problems was not massive automatic rebuilding
+> but avoid bottenlecks to the users when building goes wrong.
+I really like the concept of a distributed build system.
+
+There is the problem that in most home ISP accounts, upload speed is
+pitiful compared to download speed, by design - they don't want home
+users running servers.  However, it should be possible to design
+something along the lines of the SETI project.  Have the prospective
+servers rsync their captive build environments prior to build, and build
+in a chroot, returning the results.  I'd be happy to provide a machine
+on my home LAN to do this, and it would be interesting to design the
+control system for it.  Given many machines which have been rsync'd to
+the correct build environment, a distributed *make* could export
+individual compiles or groups of compiles to the cloud systems.  Just as
+we have "committer" rights now, we could have cloud build rights that
+involve key pairs that could digitally sign what they send back to
+identify the sender.  With random distribution of work, the chances of
+malice are considerably less, and the key signature ensures that you
+know who you got anything dodgy from.
+