Re: Machine available for community use

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Gregory Stark wrote:

> So for me to reproduce your [Gentoo] environment you would have to send
> me the complete history of what packages you installed. I would have to
> reproduce the entire history including installing and building
> intermediate versions.

If one's goal is to be able to make several copies of a server run
completely identical builds of all software down to the build order level,
then Gentoo obviously makes that more difficult than other distributions.
It's easier if you build each replicant at the same time and then keep
them synchronized, but cloning a machine that's already out there and has
been through a series of updates that perfectly is as challenging as you
describe. If the primary goal here was reproducable benchmarks where you
needed SPEC-submission level version control, Gentoo would be a completely
inappropriate choice.

But this is pushing forward PostgreSQL development you're doing here. If
you've got a problem such that something works differently based on the
order in which you built the packages, which is going to be unique to
every Linux distribution already, that is itself noteworthy and deserves
engineering out. You might think of this high-end machine being a little
different as usefully adding diversity robustness in a similar way to how
the buildfarm helps improve the core right now.

I think I have to exit this discussion before I start sounding like a
Gentoo fanboi and make my Linux consulting clients nervous. Go RedHat!

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD