Re: Rebuilds and branches

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:

> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>
>> Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> skribis:
>>
>>> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
>>>
>>>> Eric Bavier <ericbavier@gmail.com> skribis:
>>>>
>>>>> From 88a4cc3aa53c73186b5dbb85bf03b2138f24c825 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
>>>>> From: Eric Bavier <bavier@member.fsf.org>
>>>>> Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:07:55 -0500
>>>>> Subject: [PATCH 2/4] gnu: libjpeg: Upgrade to version 9a.
>>>>>
>>>>> * gnu/packages/image.scm (libjpeg): Upgrade to version 9a.
>>>>
>>>> OK.
>>>
>>> This triggered over 450 rebuilds.  I wonder if it should have been done
>>> in core-updates instead.
>>
>> Arf, probably yes, in a ‘libjpeg-update’ branch, rather.
>
> Well, suppose we update two different core packages in close succession,
> e.g. make 4.1 and bash 4.3.30.  I don't want two independent rebuilds,
> one with make 4.1 and bash 4.3.27 and another with make 4.0 and bash
> 4.3.30.  Each of those would turn out to be useless.

Right.

However, this is not a good example, since both Make and Bash are core
packages, so they would go in the same ‘core-updates’ branch.

I was rather thinking of packages like libjpeg, libpng, GLib, GTK+, Qt,
which have many dependencies, but are fairly independent from one
another.  Maybe in some cases it’ll make sense to update several of them
in the same branch, as you note.

>> What about having a policy for that?  Like, above some threshold of the
>> number of rebuilds reported by ‘guix refresh -l’ (200 packages?), set up
>> a separate branch and Hydra job set.
>
> The severity of the bug being fixed may also be a relevant factor in the
> decision.

Yes, I was thinking of non-security-critical updates.

For bug-fix updates that trigger 200+ rebuilds, it may still make sense
to have a separate branch and job set, for the sake of keeping ‘master’
stable.

WDYT?

Ludo’.