[arch-general] Question about automated builder

[Thomas S Hatch]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 11:24 AM, Ray Rashif <schiv at archlinux.org> wrote:

> On 28 January 2011 01:36, Thomas S Hatch <thatch45 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have been passively working on a similar project called quarters, but I
> > must admit that my motivation is somewhat low not knowing if the project
> is
> > in demand. So here is my question, do we think that something like this
> > would be a benefit to Arch? Is this the type of project that should merit
> my
> > attention?
>
> You have my personal full support.
>
> Does this Koji allow people to upload their own .spec/.src packages
> and offer them a build? I'm thinking something like that for quarters
> would be good. We can separate the building into 3 categories:
>
> == Distribution ==
> This is where devs and TUs connect. If you can work out some kind of
> integration, it will be totally seamless. Subversion hooks can trigger
> the builds, which then are placed in the respective home folders in
> gerolde/sigurd. They can be auto uploaded with dbscripts as well but I
> don't know if that's a good idea, mainly because there needs to be
> inspection (namcap and other habits) before the binary gets served
> across the mirrors.
>
> == Projects ==
> Any third-party packaging initiative can hook up to the system, and in
> turn get their binaries cooked. No-one is responsible for bad
> packages.
>
> == Community ==
> Users submit a PKGBUILD and in turn can download a Pacman package.
> No-one is responsible for bad packages.
>

HAHA! I had not thought of that! I love it! The build system can build user
packages from uploaded PKGBUILDS, I would need to add some extra security on
the chroots (or build them in super thin virtual machines), but that would
be great, users could verify that their packages were top notch before
submitting them to the AUR and TUs could check packages much more easily.

As for the svn hooks, I was actually looking at polling the scms, this way
an scm can be completely detached from the builder and the builder can just
arbitrarily build from any old scm. I think that the solution here is to
configure the scms with specific criteria, so that they build into specific
repos.

And thanks for your support Ray, it means a lot :)