[Kolab-devel] Moving away from OpenPKG (was: Re: How to test the Kolab server)

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Quoting Richard Bos <ml at radoeka.nl>:

> Op maandag 23 november 2009 17:27:40 schreef Gunnar Wrobel:
> > [snip]
> >
> > As pointed out by both Sascha and Bernhard before I also don't
> think  > that building the packages is our core problem. Let me try to
> explain  > why and then come back to the core problem we see: testing the
> server.
> >
> > The openSUSE build service is of course interesting. It would
> provide  > one piece of a continuous integration setup - where code
> commits  > directly lead to an updated server release that could be
> tested. Using  > something like the openSUSE build service would help in
> producing  > releases for several platforms simultaneously. Compiling these
> for  > several distributions would certainly help the package
> quality.
>
> I only mentioned the build service, as the OP wrote that
> someday maybe a shift from openpkg could happen (or not).  If that
> will take place, it is interesting to have a look at the build
> service.  The build is more much more than a service that build
> packages for different distributions, distribution versions and
> architures.  It is a collaboration service.  Packagers can easily
> work together to build packages, just like code version systems
> allow branches this thing allows branches as well.  I'm using the
> service quite long and very often I'm surprised how well it works.  
> It's difficult to explain if you have not worked with it, so I'm
not
> going to do that.
>
> As all of you say, testing is important but at the end of the
> testing phase code is waiting to be delivered and most likely it
> will be delivered via a package...  And this is also true for the
> testing suite.
>
> If the Kolab Konsortium wants to shift away from openPKG, it
> will pick one other distro, with a long term contract (SLES, Ubuntu
> LTE, RH, CentOS, etc).

Hm, I have to disagree to that. Of course this is just my opinion but  
from the discussion we had one and a half weeks ago I had the  
impression that we would not like to throw away the advantage that you  
can install the Kolab server on most base distributions. So we were  
talking about using source based distributions and the favorite one  
seemed to be pkgsrc  
(http://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/packages.html). There was one  
lonely voice pleading for Gentoo - yes, it was me - but I guess I hope  
in vain :)

> The disadvantage might be that not all
> hardware platforms are supported, but that is something that will
> probably be overcome.  Test on that distribution and provide a rock
> solid groupware server.  If now the packages are build in the build
> services (which could be hosted on e.g. build.kolab.org, just like
> cvs) for that distribution, other packages could be build from the
> same sources and spec files at the same time.  Of course without
the
> guarantee that it will work flawlessly, the community has to take
> care for that.  Will that happen I can't tell, is it the best
> solution, don't know.  It is just an example of what is possible.

Are the distributions supported by the build service limited to RPM?

Cheers,

Gunnar

>
> -- 
> Richard
>
>

-- 
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E-mail : p at rdus.de                                 Dr. Gunnar Wrobel
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