I'm sorry to open a thread that I'm sure will cause a lot of discussion most of
which will probably be fruitless and pointless. And yet, I feel compelled to
do this. Please think before you respond, and only reply if you have some
thing useful to add to this conversation.
Recently, I advocated (as in RTI advocacy), a change to a program - kstat.
After I integrated this change, another advocate pointed out that the SPARC
port was broken by this otherwise worthwhile change. In that particular
instance, the advocate took it upon himself to fix the problem.
However, its clear to me that this particular advocate (Richard Lowe) may be
the only advocate with regular access to SPARC. Its also clear to me that the
vast majority of ordinary developers lack such access to SPARC.
SPARC is on the brink.
There in the past have been numerous offers of SPARC hardware. However, as far
as I can see, these offers have come without any hosting, or even shipping to
get the hardware to somewhere where it can be useful.
Historically, if a SPARC problem arose that broke the build, the change would
be backed out. Sun engineers were expected to build and test their changes on
both architectures before integration. illumos has never had this requirement,
because we have always understood that most developers don't have SPARC access;
but we have still tried hard to keep the SPARC port working.
Now the choice is not mine to make alone, but I'm going to strongly advocate
that we simply stop making that effort unless sufficient SPARC resources are
made available to keep the port "healthy". The resources that we need:
a) Hardware - we need at least three fairly decent configurations (4 CPUs or
better ideally) -- a build system for advocates, a build system open to all
illumos developers, and a reservable "test" system. (A sufficiently beefy
system - e.g. a 12 way system, could be used to serve both of the build system
needs, but I'd still prefer two separate boxes if possible.) In the past there
have been many people who have offered to donate -- in some cases pretty high
end -- SPARC hardware to illumos. We've failed to find a location for it
though.
b) Rack space for the systems, with sufficient power, cooling, and network
bandwidth for 24x7 operation. We also need remote console access to all three
systems, and ideally some kind of remote power control for at least the test
system. I think we should like to see a 12-month commitment to keep these
things running; we don't want to go to the expense and trouble of setting them
up only to find we have to vacate a few weeks later. Recognize that two of
these systems are going need very wide access to allow any illumos developer to
have access. (We'll do some basic validation of email addresses, and use
public key SSH authentication, and we an even arrange for a "click to agree"
legal agreement process before granting access.)
c) If "a" and "b" are not co-located, then funds to ship the servers to the
hosting location.
d) Human resources (administrative) to perform basic system administration and
setup of the above resources, including a calendaring system for managing the
test reservations. I *suspect* that this is the one resource we will find in
plenty once the others are answered. So please wait to reply to this until we
see if a - c are forthcoming.
So, if we don't have these resources, and nobody is able to provide them, then
I believe we don't have the resources to keep the SPARC port healthy, and I
don't think we should continue to try. In such a case, I'll recommend that we
consider SPARC a secondary port, and not consider its functionality in deciding
whether to integrate new changes or not. (That said, I think we'll always be
happy to accept fixes for SPARC from volunteers who submit them with
documentation demonstrating that they have tested such fixes, but I imagine
that SPARC support will quickly degenerate if we stop requiring SPARC
functionality to work during the RTI process.)
I do know that some people have been working hard to get a viable SPARC
distribution going. My hat is off to those people. I don't know if we yet
have such a distribution. I know no small level of effort has been invested
there, and it is not my intention to denigrate that effort.
But even if everything worked perfectly for SPARC today, without the above
resources I don't think we can truly consider the SPARC port healthy. We need
to be able to point developers at resources that they can use to fix and test
their code for this platform. Without that, its not fair or reasonable to
insist that all changes be correct on SPARC.
Nor is it fair or reasonable to ask the single RTI advocate (who by the way is
also the only RTI advocate who doesn't get a paycheck for illumos related
work!) to maintain this port all on his own.
In the past I tried be a middleman for this conversation -- it didn't work out
so well. Lots of offers for hardware came, but nobody with resources to host
them, or an ability to ship hardware to the destination. So instead I'm going
invite folks to discuss and solve the problem here. I think its more likely
that a solution will come in an open forum. And if a solution can't be found
here, then it will be obvious to everyone, and hopefully nobody will think
worse of us if we then decide to reduce our commitment to what will at that
point be obviously an unsupportable platform.
(A brief note about simulators: there are some SPARC simulators. I'm not aware
that any of them are capable of running illumos. If they were, it would be a
huge boon to illumos and SPARC platform support. However, because hardware
frequently differs from emulation, I don't believe the existence of such a
simulation eliminates the requirements I've stated here for a healthy port. It
*would* mean that there would be a reduced demand for the build systems, I
think, and less frequent use of a remote test system, but I think we would
still need these things to be available to the community to keep the port
healthy.)
Thanks.
- Garrett
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