bug#42162: gforge.inria.fr to be taken off-line in Dec. 2020

[zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 at 18:07, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> wrote:

> I guess, in our mind, the problem was fixed long ago.  :-)

Yes, to me the 2 remaining packages was from
<http://issues.guix.gnu.org/43442#0> but moved already to Gitlab.
Whatever, :-)


> > As I am asking in this thread [3], the Guix project has the ressource,
> > storage speaking, to archive these tarballs -- waiting a robust
> > long-term automatic system.  But we (the Guix projet) cannot because we
> > duplicate the effort on keeping twice all the build outputs.  Somehow,
> > between Berlin and Bordeaux, coherent policies for conservancy are
> > missing. IMHO.
>
> So I think we’re lucky that we can try different solutions at once.

Well, it is not what I am observing.  Anyway. :-)


> The best solution is the one that won’t rely solely on the Guix project:
> SWH + Disarchive.  We’re getting there!

Yes.  Although, it is hard to define "the Guix project". :-)
Well, the remaining question is where to set the Disarchive
database... but hardware could be floating around once it is ready.
;-)


> The second-best solution is to improve our tooling so we can actually
> keep source code in a more controlled way.  That’s what I had in mind
> with <https://ci.guix.gnu.org/jobset/source>.  We have storage space for
> that on berlin, but it’s not infinite.

If Berlin has space, why so much derivations are missing when running
time-machine?

Well, aside the implementation that ci.guix.gnu.org fetches from repo
every X minutes, i.e., drops all the commits (and the associated
derivations) pushed in the meantime.  And that bordeaux.guix.gnu.org
fetches from guix-commits the commit batch, i.e., builds only one
commit of this batch.


> Another approach is to use ‘git-fetch’ more, at least for non-Autotools
> packages (that’s the case for Scotch, for instance.)

This is what I suggested when opening this thread [1] more than one
year ago.  Reading the discussion and keeping in mind the inertia, I
do not think it is a viable path.  For instance, you know all the
pitfalls and you updated Scotch without switching to git-fetch -- no
criticism :-)  just a realistic matter of facts to have good coverage.

<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-05/msg00224.html>


> So we can do all these things, and we’ll have to push hard to get the
> Disarchive option past the finish line because it’s the most promising
> long-term.

Agree.  Even, I think it is the only long-term option. :-)


All the best,
simon