[Dwarf-discuss] Sourceware infrastructure updates for Q3 2024

[Mark Wielaard]

Sourceware infrastructure community updates for Q3 2024

Sourceware has provided the infrastructure for the core toolchain and
developer tools for more than 25 years.
https://sourceware.org/sourceware-25-roadmap.html

The last couple of years it has transformed from a purely volunteer
into a professional organization with an eight person strong Project
Leadership Committee, monthly open office hours, multiple hardware
services partners, expanded services, the Software Freedom Conservancy
as fiscal sponsor and a more diverse funding model that allows us to
enter into contracts with paid contractors or staff when appropriate.

Every quarter we provide a summary of news about Sourceware, the core
toolchain and developer tools infrastructure from the last 3 months.

- Code snapshots for binutils and gdb
- RISC-V Pioneer Box for builder.sourceware.org gcc CI
- Sourceware @ Cauldron 2024
- A Sourceware Forge (an experiment with Forgejo)
- Sourceware Open Office hours

= Code snapshots for binutils and gdb

  binutils and gdb now also generate code snapshots on
  https://snapshots.sourceware.org

  Thanks to OSUOSL we now have snapshots.sourceware.org to publish
  static artifacts from current git repos created in isolated
  containers. It can be used as alternative to git hooks or cron jobs
  to generate snapshots for code, manuals, api or coverage reports.

  https://snapshots.sourceware.org/binutils/trunk
  https://snapshots.sourceware.org/gdb/trunk

  The container files and build steps are defined through the builder
  project.

= RISC-V Pioneer Box for builder.sourceware.org gcc CI

  Thanks to RISC-V International and SOPHGO we got a Milk-V Pioneer
  Box for builder.sourceware.org that we can use for gcc CI.

  When originally setup a full gcc build and check took ~10 hours.
  After various bug fixes and tweaks to the build system it now takes
  ~4 hours. It has 64 cores, but single core performance isn't very
  fast. So fixing a few more parallelism bottlenecks could save even
  more build time.

  https://inbox.sourceware.org/20240801210720.GQ24765@gnu.wildebeest.org/

= Sourceware @ Cauldron 2024

  Various Sourceware Project Leadership committee members were present
  at the Cauldron and had an open discussion about services, plans,
  tips and tricks on using bugzilla and cgit, b4 and public-inbox,
  git-pw and patchwork, the snapshot builders and manual generation,
  wikis, buildbot and try-bots, ci-bots, full-builds and the bunsen
  testresults database and what makes developers most productive.

  BoF Report, Topics, and Notes:
  https://inbox.sourceware.org/20240925004343.GR21963@gnu.wildebeest.org/

= A Sourceware Forge (an experiment with Forgejo)

  In multiple discussions at the Cauldron various developers and
  maintainers indicated they really would like to do a serious
  experiment with a Forge and a pull-request workflow.

  There will be no drastic changes. We'll keep improving services to
  make the (email-based) workflows better and more efficient. But we
  will also do an experiment with Forgejo to let people try out a pull
  request workflow. We don't know if the experiment will be
  successful, nobody will be forced to participate, but volunteers to
  try it out (and help with the setup and configuration) are more than
  welcome. It might take up to a year to determine whether the
  experiment is a success or a failure.

  We secured a VM from Red Hat OSCI that should have enough resources
  for the initial experiment. The Sourceware PLC will discuss what
  resources are needed if we want to roll this out for all Sourceware
  projects. We already made anestimate for a larger gitolite server as
  part of the Security Vision document:
  https://sourceware.org/sourceware-security-vision.html
  Part of the Forgejo experiment will be making sure the resource
  estimates are correct.

  Sergio Durigan Junior and Mark J. Wielaard are currently setting up
  the Forge and hope to have a call for participation in ~2 weeks.

= Sourceware Open Office hours

  Every second Friday of the month is the Sourceware Overseers Open
  Office hour in #overseers on irc.libera.chat from 16:00 till 17:00
  UTC.

  Please feel free to drop by with any Sourceware services and hosting
  questions. Of course you are welcome to drop into the #overseers
  channel at any time and we can also be reached through email and
  bugzilla: https://sourceware.org/mission.html#organization

  If you aren't already and want to keep up to date on Sourceware
  infrastructure services then please also subscribe to the overseers
  mailinglist. https://sourceware.org/mailman/listinfo/overseers

Sourceware PLC,

 Frank Ch. Eigler, Christopher Faylor, Ian Kelling, Ian Lance Taylor,
 Tom Tromey, Jon Turney, Mark J. Wielaard, Elena Zannoni