[PlanetCCRMA] Questions that might be able to be added to the FAQs

[William M. Quarles]

On 12/21/2009 6:59 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-12-21 at 08:59 -0500, William M. Quarles wrote:
>> On 12/14/2009 3:04 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 15:27 -0500, William M. Quarles wrote:
>>>> Hi Fernando (and fellow list subsribers),
>>>>
>>>> I have some questions that might belong in the FAQs. I'd also like to
>>>> know the answers to these.
>>>>
>>>> 1. At what point do you start building packages new Fedora releases?
>>>
>>> Well, as soon as I can :-) Usually I don't start trying to build package
>>> before the release but rather immediately after. How long it takes
>>> depends (at least historically) on how different is the build
>>> environment and how difficult it is to make packages build - big changes
>>> in gcc have made it complicated in the past, fc12 was not so bad.
>>
>> I've just been a bit worried I suppose, because there still hasn't been
>> an official announcement of complete (or at least near-complete) support
>> for Fedora 11 or 12 on the Planet website yet. I've installed Planet
>> CCRMA on Fedora 11 machine, but alas don't seem to ever get around to
>> trying it out.
>
> Fedora 11 is complete (and has been for a while). Fedora 12 is also in
> pretty good shape, I think only missing the planetccrma-apps package
> which I need to rework. I seem to never find time to update the web
> site...

Well, I guess what I am getting at here is that other open-source 
projects/repositories out there seem to have multiple people working on 
them. You are pretty much tackling the whole thing here by yourself 
while you also have all of those machines at Stanford to worry about too 
maintaining, too, so I'm trying to see how we can help you in the 
interest of reducing your burnout while enhancing the production of the 
software and documentation.

>>>> 2. How can I contribute to Planet CCRMA (besides branching the software
>>>> to cover other architectures/distributions)?
>>>
>>> If you have specific patches that address problems you could send them
>>> to me. What other architectures would you be interested in using?
>>> Distributions?
>>
>> I was interested in trying to see if I could get Planet CCRMA RPMS to
>> build on a ppc-based Power Mac running Fedora with just making the
>> appropriate changes to config files and spec files of your existing
>> SRPMs to adjust for the architecture. Do you think that might work?
>
> It should work. In fact it should not require changes to the .config
> files as they are based on the Fedora configuration files which I think
> still support ppc.
>
> I _think_ someone else on the list had done that before (building on
> ppc)

I'm sure that there would be some stupid university rules against this, 
but would there be a way to host a PowerPC build of Planet CCRMA if 
someone else did the building?

>> If
>> not, the only programming languages that I ever learned to use were
>> BASIC and FORTRAN, which I am sure doesn't help the Planet followers
>> much. However, I would like to try see if the build can be done just by
>> changing configs and specs.
>>
>>> A very good way to contribute if you are into building packages would be
>>> to become a Fedora packager and try to move packages from Planet CCRMA
>>> to Fedora. There are many that could be moved, the more that are in
>>> Fedora proper the better...
>>
>> Gee, I thought you used to detest the idea of moving packages over to
>> the f.k.a. "Fedora Extras." What's changed?
>
> A lot has changed :-) There are advantages and disadvantages, but the
> pros outnumber the cons I think. What I could not do is do the migration
> myself, I just don't have the time. But others are very welcome to do it
> and many are now helping with that.
>
>>>> 3. How can I build a custom kernel from the Planet CCRMA kernel-rt SRPM?
>>>> (I've tried using the instructions from the Fedora Project Wiki on
>>>> Fedora 10 and I don't think that they quite translate over to the Planet
>>>> kernel-rt SRPMs. Not only that, I have doubts that they still are valid
>>>> for the actual Fedora kernel SRPMs for Fedora 11 and above, because they
>>>> don't seem to work without modifications to the spec file).
>>>
>>> I think building from the srpm should be the same as for other Fedora
>>> kernels. You do have to use the proper .src.rpm package - for example
>>> older kernels will probably not build correctly for fc12. Which one are
>>> you interested in rebuilding?
>>
>> I think I had tried rebuilding Planet real-time kernels for 9 and 10
>> back when I had those installed, and neither would work. There was
>> always a compile-time error. I think I even tried rebuilding without
>> changing the config file nor the spec file, and I couldn't get the
>> PLanet rt kernel to build. Also, it looked as if the config files I made
>> for those kernels get overwritten or bypassed in the spec file such that
>> a default config file is used anyway, although I'm not entirely certain
>> of that. I might be wrong, but it looks like the same bypass/overwriting
>> is happening when I try to rebuild a custom kernel based on the standard
>> non-rt Fedora kernels on Fedora 12.
>
> There is a base config* file which has some things overriden by more
> specific config* files. If you unpack the source package you will see
> them in the SOURCES/ directory (look for config* files).
>
> Of course there might be problems with rebuilding if you hit things that
> don't build on ppc or should be treated differently on ppc.

I don't even own a ppc machine yet, that is in the works. I was actually 
trying to build the kernel for an Intel Pentium 4-M machine, with a 
bunch of options removed because my computer doesn't support them anyway.

Happy Decemberween everybody,
William