4 ms·

It takes a LONG time, depending on the machine(s) and architectures. pkgsrc has quarterly releases (2022Q1, 2022Q2, and so on). Alpha and UltraSPARC are fast

It takes a LONG time, depending on the machine(s) and architectures. pkgsrc has quarterly releases (2022Q1, 2022Q2, and so on). Alpha and UltraSPARC are fast and finish in a month or two, and can build any updates after the first run. SPARC (running on an UltraSPARC Sun Fire V100) and mips64eb (running on an EdgeRouter Lite) finish before the end of the quarter now and then, but I don't count on it. earm and earmv4 may get to the point where they can finish before the end of a quarter because it's trivial to add additional machines, but I haven't had the time or resources to do that yet. Also, there's an issue with distcc and earmv4 I haven't figured out yet. mipsel (Cobalt) and sh3el (Landisk) are not slowpokes, but are run as best effort. The Cobalt is a 250 MHz Cobalt RaQ2 with 256 megs of memory and a 500 gig SATA drive, and the SuperH machine is a 266 MHz SH4 with only 64 megs of memory and a 160 gig IDE disk. Both make use of distcc to help speed compiles. m68k is done by a small cluster of machines: a 1U Amiga 1200 with a Blizzard 1260 (50 MHz m68060), 256 megs of memory, and an SSD on a SATA-IDE, then an IDE-SCSI adapter, two Quadra 605 with 132 megs, two Quadra 610s with 260 megs, and two Quadra 800s with 264 megs. Two of those Macs aren't quite stable yet, but should be fully fixed for the next run. VAX is done by a VAXstation 4000/90 with 128 megs and a 4000/60 with 104 megs, both with fast, modern disks on SATA-IDE-SCSI adapters. Some staging and testing is done using a virtual VAX in simh, but as much actual work as possible is done on real hardware. None of mipsel, sh3el, m68k nor vax are expected to finish a quarter before the quarter is up, but with added hardware and improvements to methods for helping them, more and more packages will be done before the quarters are up. Also, many of a previous quarter's packages are still up to date in the next quarter, so reusing old packages helps lots. Everything is shared using a Raspberry Pi 4 with USB-3 hardware mirrored disk which is running as an NFS server and is also doing distcc for several of the architectures.

sillywalk 4y ago
Wow, thanks for that detailed reply, I'd wondered about old disks. Also, it's impressive it just runs for that long. Also, also that seems like a small amount of RAM for compiling things these days (though I remember compiling a slackware kernel on a a 486 with 8mb of ram.). I'm assuming it's an older version of gcc
- johnklos 4y ago
  Most of my machines have modern disks. I think the oldest disks I run are recently purchased 70 gig 2.5" UW-320 SCSI disks for about $15 each from eBay. It's amazing how wonderfully compatible SCSI is with other SCSI. The version of gcc in NetBSD-9 is 7.5.0, and all of the architectures run the same version. gcc is a bit memory hungry, but it's telling that it can still get things done even when it doesn't have much. I'm testing NetBSD-current with gcc 10.4.0 on a Mac LC III+ with 36 megs of memory, and it was able to build perl all by itself. Granted, it took nine and a half days, but it succeeded!

sillywalk 4y ago

Wow, thanks for that detailed reply, I'd wondered about old disks. Also, it's impressive it just runs for that long. Also, also that seems like a small amount of RAM for compiling things these days (though I remember compiling a slackware kernel on a a 486 with 8mb of ram.). I'm assuming it's an older version of gcc

johnklos 4y ago
Most of my machines have modern disks. I think the oldest disks I run are recently purchased 70 gig 2.5" UW-320 SCSI disks for about $15 each from eBay. It's amazing how wonderfully compatible SCSI is with other SCSI. The version of gcc in NetBSD-9 is 7.5.0, and all of the architectures run the same version. gcc is a bit memory hungry, but it's telling that it can still get things done even when it doesn't have much. I'm testing NetBSD-current with gcc 10.4.0 on a Mac LC III+ with 36 megs of memory, and it was able to build perl all by itself. Granted, it took nine and a half days, but it succeeded!