On 5/4/07, Brian Gupta <brian.gupta at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dennis,
>
> I'm glad you joined the conversation.
Thank you for starting it up. I had been very busy for the past
twenty hours or so and that is why I missed the beginning of this.
Sorry about that.
> See responses below
>
> > Blastwave has provided free access to the build servers and tools
> > for years. Since day one and any developer that wants to work on
> > porting software to Solaris can just join up and login and have access
> > to the whole stack. All x86 and AMD64 and sun4u and sun4v servers are
> > available for free and have been that way all along. All you have to
> > do is conform to some standards to get the package out the door at
> > some point.
>
> That really impressed me. Perchance, can this farm be used for
> building OpenSolaris/SFW packages? (I think the rules say that you
> have to be within two revs of bleeding edge.)
The answer is a resounding "YES".
In fact, previous to my server room move I had been providing a
dual Opteron based machine to Laszlo Peter for pkgsrc work and then
somewhere during the move that box went down and stayed down. I was
going to put snv_62 into it today and then slide it back in the rack
for people to use. I also have a slew of different hardware types for
free use by the community but it seems I have done a poor job of
letting people know that. I'll fix that.
At the very least I want to create a tree called 5.11 because we
already have 5.8 and 5.9 and 5.10 that all link back to packages built
on Solaris 8. The old rule has been that if it works on a previous
edition of Solaris ( like 5.8 ) then it will work on Solaris 9 and 10.
However we all need to see the value of integration with Solaris
Nevada. It should be abundantly clear that we need a new tree and that
most of the packages ( 1680 of them as of today ) can directly just
slide over with little change. Maybe a recompile but not much else.
The current 5.11 branch is just a link back to the 5.8 packages today.
A new directory with both an "unstable" and "stable" branch for 5.11
is needed and its trivial for me to create the branch. The build
infrastructure already exists and so does the community.
What is the hold up here ?
> > Lastly, Myself and the people that jumped in to build a community
> > based open source software repository did what we did because Sun
> > would not or could not. In either case, we do have a "community"
> > based project that is outside of the Sun firewalls and its not run by
> > nor paid for by any employee of Sun. We do have some real cool
> > hardware from Sun and lets face it, that makes a huge difference.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I don't in anyway mean to diminish Blastwave. In
> fact I am a user of Blastwave, as it simply is the best option for
> open source on Solaris.
I don't think it is the "best". To be the best it needs to be
more available to the community along with more facilities. I have a
pretty good thing going in there right now but the addition of more
build hosts for people would be a good thing. Thankfully I have been
working with some "Solaris Adoption" people and they have granted me
access to a chunk of the Sun GRID also. We just recently updated those
servers ( x86/AMD64 and UltraSparc ) to Solaris 10 Update 3 along with
patches and tools etc etc. That is not Solaris Nevada however.
I think that the Blastwave project is the "best" for users of
Solaris 8 and 9 but not necessary the best for Solaris 10 and Nevada.
We need to take a few giant leaps forward to really create what people
need long term such that all that software keeps working well out of
the box and freely. That was my dream back in 2002 and it is stiull
my vision in 2007. Perhaps, with a little team work, we can achieve
parts of this vision in the next 90 to 180 days.
> > Essentially we did what we had to do in order to get software
> > built for Solaris x86 and Sparc ( equally ) back in a time when x86
> > was considered a joke and Sun was said to be "dead". Here we are years
> > later and both are posting a strong healthy pulse. I would like to
> > think that the community built software at Blastwave serves a purpose
> > and people are happy with what we did.
>
> Can we agree that Sun has now "come in from the wilderness", and is
in a big way !
> realizing the importance of maintaining "out of box" ease of use? We
> should see more and more applications migrated to the SFW
> consolidation. The real issue is how can the community and Sun work
> together to further this goal, while still maintaining a "Universe" of
> packages, such as you are maintaining now. (Ideally the Blastwave
> universe would integrate into Solaris, and follow and help define the
> OpenSolaris SFW build standards.
That is a tough conversation that needs to happen right out here in
the open. There have been a number of political players and detractors
along the way that wanted to control or curtail the process. There
have been Sun execs that have spoken with me on the phone for months
and months and even *they* could make no progress. It was like a wall
had been built somewhere to stop the flow of open source software.
Certainly some mud has been flung my way and I have flung back. What a
mess. How do we push a lot of these old problems under the carpet and
go forwards? Well I never stopped trying to go forwards and regardless
of what problems Blastwave ran into I somehow kept it under my wing.
It has not been easy and at times, not very pretty.
All of the software at Blastwave has a prefix of CSW and that means
Community SoftWare. It is built by the community freely and openly
and the facilities have always been freely available year after year
after year and I have done *everything* that I can do personally to
help the process. When I see a community need I try to fill it. With
things like the "How To Install Solaris 10" document I recently
released :
http://www.blastwave.org/docs/s10u3_howto.html
That took a LOT of work to write and I am not done. There is more
work to be done there and I will extend it continually.
As for community software, in order for the massive pile of CSW
software to be integrated into Solaris or OpenSolaris we need to close
ranks a bit and stop bickering with each other.
> > We had to do "something" and we did it. Those are the kind of
> > people that you need.
>
> Agreed. When and if the SFW, GNU and CCD groups combine, what role do
> you see yourself playing? (Besides from the valuable role you
> currently play.)
I stand by my committment that I have never walked away from. I
personally told the community years ago that I will do *everything*
that I can to ensure that open source software can be built freely,
openly and distributed freely to all Solaris users everywhere on any
architecture or version. My mission statement has been to keep
Blastwave alive, fed, open and free to use by the Solaris Community.
Dennis Clarke dclarke at blastwave.org
Director Blastwave.org http://www.blastwave.org
----------------------------------------------------
Further Info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastwave
