Re: Resource configuring

Jonathan, some nice work here...

> [I was thinking that for the mini-launch it might be handy to have a 
> complete sidai-like team. I'm willing to offer my own as a starting point 
> when(/if?) I get it all working.

No objections from me... Of course, that's what glasli1 is
(but it's not in public CVS).  And it doesn't get rebuilt
from scratch.  (Michael would yell at us.)

> Even better would be to have some auto-setup stuff. I
> think Harlan has been working on this for hosts?

Yes.  He can say more if he wants.

> I added gcc to my team and installed it, but to my chagrin found that it 
> wasn't being used by any of the builds. On looking more closely I noticed 
> that the sidai linux prototype sets all of the various resources to the 
> standard RedHat locations. I can understand the idea of using the 
> pre-installed versions where you have them, but doesn't this also jar 
> with sourceism?

This is one of those things reasonable people might differ
on.  I can imagine someone using sunfreeware.com (and
hp/aix/etc equivs) simply to splat gcc/gmake/perl/python
onto every box and leave ARK well out of it, simply on the
"life is too short" principle.

The current sidai setting may have to do with testing the
sample1 stuff using a 486/33 box -- i.e. bootstrapping gcc
took about four days :-)  Where I have faster linux boxes,
I've done as you suggest.

> Could we replace all of the various *_BOOT resources with
> something that checks to see if you've revealed a
> particular package? e.g.:
> 
>  ALL.xml
>  -------
>  <CC>
>  <string>@team:ark-dirs:OUR@/bin/gcc</string>
>  <constraint><dependency type="optional" name="gcc" /></constraint>
>  </CC>
>  
>  ia32-rhlinux.xml
>  ----------------
>  <CC>
>  <unless package="gcc" status="revealed" />
>  <string>/usr/bin/gcc</string>
>  </CC>

No, there's no mechanism to do exactly that, and points out
a constraints thing I've been wondering about...  Some
constraints work purely as "guards" to their corresponding
value, e.g.

  <CC>
  <constraint><host-spec>sidai:hpux</host-spec></constraint>
  <string>/usr/bin/gcc</string>
  </CC>

but others have a "make it so" aspect as well as a "check if
it is so" aspect:

  <CC>
  <constraint><dependency type="essential" name="gcc" /></constraint>
  <string>/usr/bin/gcc</string>
  </CC>

Maybe there should be a way to have <dependency...>
constraints without the "make it so" behavior. ???  Another
attribute (besides type= and name=)...

   action="check-only" or "make-it-so" (default)

???  (In general, I suspect there's still a lot of thinking
ahead of us on the constraints business.)

Will