Re: Guix on aarch64

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Hi Leo,

> On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 12:13:44PM -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote:
>> Regardless, I think we should seriously consider moving the Aarch64
>> build slave(s) to Hydra for now, until Cuirass is more mature.
>
> I agree with your points about why berlin.guixsd.org makes it harder to
> maintain the aarch64 port. I use Berlin substitutes alongside those of
> Hydra but I don't actually do any build debugging with Berlin yet
> because I don't know how to use the interface effectively.

I think our use of Hydra is not sustainable.  It requires regular manual
intervention by Mark, careful tuning of SQL queries, conscientious
clean up of old substitutes, and we have not a single person familiar
with the Perl code.

We do have people working on Cuirass, though.  Let’s add important
missing features to Cuirass instead of making efforts to keep Hydra on
life support.

> It would be really great to get another pair of machines with similar
> capabilities.

I agree.  We need volunteers to pick a particular configuration (my
suggestion is to start with an Overdrive 3000 rack server[1]) and find a
place to host these servers.  We have not been successful in delegating
this to other people and unfortunately the maintainers cannot take care
of this themselves.

[1]: https://shop.softiron.com/product/overdrive-3000/

--
Ricardo