Re: Rebuilds and branches

[Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org>]

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.

> 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.

> In an ideal world a patch queue manager would automatically take care of
> that.

I'm not sure the decision can be made fully automatically, but it would
certainly be nice to have some tools to make the job easier.

       Mark