Re: linux-libre source tarballs (disable "deblob-check"?)

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

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On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 10:45:22PM -0400, Leo Famulari wrote:
> The immediate solution is for me to make sure the tarballs have built
> before committing the updates. I already do this for x86_64 and I can
> start doing it for aarch64 too.

Well, this is easier said than done, currently.

I was able to build the "arm64-generic" tarball for 5.11.18, but we
actually don't have the capability to build these things reliably at the
moment.

We only have 1 real aarch64 machine (Overdrive 1000) [0] in the build
farm, and it's never idle. The emulated builders are super slow.

We could change (gnu ci) to increase the timeout for these jobs, like
Ludo suggested, but I'm not sure it's worth it? I estimate the Overdrive
would spend at least one day a week just building tarballs, which is
unreasonable IMO.

The problem is that the linux-libre team told us that we shouldn't trust
the linux-libre deblobbing scripts to work and that we have to
"deblob-check" them, which takes a very long time. [1]

I suggest we disable these checks for now, at least for aarch64; have
they ever actually found a problem?

At least for aarch64, the choice is not between "blobby tarball or
non-blobby tarball", but rather between "no tarball or tarball".

[0] I can add another 4 cores (Macchiatobin) to the build farm, maybe
next weekend.

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