port install efficiency issue

[Joshua Root]

Scott Haneda wrote:
> Can we talk more about this?  I have the ability to host such a build
> farm.  Now, I could not host one machine, of every architecture, of
> every OS, I just do not have the room in colocation.
> 
> I do have quite a bit of room if we go 1U though.  So 2 1U machines, a
> PPC and a Intel, and I would imagine, that PPC machine could go away a
> lot sooner than we all think.  Mac Mini's could take it further, since
> they are so small, 8 of them can fit on a shelf and occupy no more than
> a few U's of space.  The damn power bricks are more an issue than
> anything else.  There have to be PPC Mini's out there to be had.
> 
> As long as the various OS versions could be virtualized, so we could
> have 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 and forward virtualized on each machine, it
> would not at all be hard to come up with a authentication routine to
> allow builds to happen on whatever virtual interface you want.
> 
> I have the Ip space to spare, so each virtual machine could have it's
> own connection space, or we could do some simple dhcp pooling.  Static
> IP's are something I was alloted a /24 of, and do not see giving up 20
> or so of them being an issue.
> 
> Am I looking at this wrong, or would this be helpful?  Is this too much
> reliance on an outside party for core ports features?  I have had access
> to this data center for 9+ years or so, I do not plan on giving up that
> access at any time soon.  The bandwidth requirements are minimal, it
> would go unnoticed.

Thanks for the offer. I think it's safe to say, though, that finding the
hardware for a build farm will be a relatively minor issue.

The main thing that is needed is the software. Server-side, to build all
the ports in some kind of intelligent order and copy the archives to
somewhere from which they can be downloaded by the client, with error
reporting; and to keep doing this as needed when new versions and new
ports are added.

Client-side, to check for the presence of an archive with the desired
version/variants on the server, and to download and unarchive it instead
of building from source when possible.

- Josh