On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 10:16:54PM +0100, Marius Bakke wrote: > Should this not be pushed to core-updates? `guix refresh -l` reports: > > Building the following 190 packages would ensure 395 dependent packages > are rebuilt: [...] > > That will take a while on Hydra, and in the mean time anyone trying to > install any dependent (or sub-dependent) package will have to compile > them locally. > > Unless there is a security issue, isn't this exactly what core-updates > is for?
Not quite. Initially, core-updates was for updates of the core packages, that is, those that you can currently see being built on the core-updates branch of hydra. With the lack of performance of hydra, we ended up putting more and more packages requiring large rebuilds into that branch. Often, we also just add a feature branch (something-update) and have it built on hydra, especially also in cases where it is unclear how much we break by the update, to make sure that master remains in a workable state. After the hydra machine crashed, the FSF sysadmins switched to a more powerful set-up, and right now, we can tolerate a larger package churn. In case of doubt when updating a package requiring larger rebuilds, we can also have it depend on the current load on hydra towards which branch we push. Andreas
