Re: Bug#730216: please consider allowing pypy to build on machines with less ram.

Stefano Rivera wrote:
> Hi peter (2013.11.22_20:36:12_+0200)
>
> I assume this was bug was triggered by the thread on
> pkg-openstack-devel. 
It was not, it was triggered by me poking through buildd pages and 
noticing that the new version of simplejson was being blocked from 
building since it had picked up a dependency on pypy. I did consider 
filing a bug asking them to only build pypy stuff on architectures that 
had pypy but I decided to file a bug on pypy first and see what the 
response was.
> My reply there hasn't appeared in the archives yet
> - so I'll repeat the relevant bits here.
>
>   
>> I appreciate that grinding swap on buildds is less than ideal but I
>> still think it is preferable to not having the package on those
>> architectures at all. Especially as slow architectures are where
>> having optimised implementations of stuff is most important.
>>     
>
> Is that not a decision for those porters to make? What's the
> disadvantage of letting it continue to try to build there?
> It seems fairly harmless, to me. After installing the build-deps the
> package realises there isn't enough RAM, and aborts, wasting only a few
> minutes of buildd time.
>   
Sorry if my post wasn't clear, what I meant to say is

"I still think it is preferable to grind swap on a buildd for a few days 
than to not have the package built at all"

We accept build times in the days for several other packages, I don't 
see why we shouldn't accept them for pypy. Or do you think a pypy build 
with only 1GB of ram would take more than a "few days"?

> I personally have a machine that's capable, and if the Debian armhf
> porters would like me to, I'd be quite happy to do binary uploads for
> it, when necessary.
I also have armhf machines with more than 1GB of ram but AIUI policy 
requires that packages be buildable on the autobuilders :/.