Re: ARM/x86 builds for xdg-app runtimes

[Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org>]

Hi Cosimo,

In my experience, unless we find native infrastructure that someone is willing to lend, there is absolutely 0 gain from running the compilers natively. However, fully cross compiling can be a nightmare (I know this by experience on the Win32 build stuff I did years ago). Fixing the autotooling on every single project is a no-go, and there are build-time tools that are compiled and run locally which makes things really hard for a fully cross compiled environment.

My suggestion would be that you run the ./configure && make stage on an ARM environment that (virtualized or not, the important thing here is that it has decent I/O performance, i.e: not a RaspberryPI 2) and that you use a distcc-like solution on your existing hardware and a cross compiler at the builder's end.

Another alternative would be to reach these guys: https://www.scaleway.com/ and see if they're willing to sponsor the GNOME project in exchange for some sort of recognition.

My 2 cents.

2015-07-03 1:01 GMT+01:00 Cosimo Cecchi <cosimoc gnome org>:

Hi all,

At the West Coast hackfest, we brought up the topic of building xdg-app runtimes for other architectures; they're currently only built for x86-64.

For x86 systems there should not be many additional requirements on the hardware side, but for ARM builds we need machines to natively build the runtimes on.

Some people mentioned they could possibly have machines to donate to the cause; another possibility would be to get a slice on existing builders that distributions like Fedora use for their ARM builds. This brought up the question about where the xdg-app runtime builders currently live, and whether there is any particular requirement on the infrastructure. (For example, do all builders need to be in the same location?)

Another possibility that was brought up is using something like Scratchbox2 and do cross-compilation for ARM on our existing infrastructure. Does anyone have experience with that sort of setup?

Cheers,

Cosimo

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Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz