Arrfab's blog - RPMforgehttps://arrfab.net/2010-11-14T13:11:00+01:00Some tips and tricks, mostly around CentOSRPMforge el6 ppc builds ...2010-11-14T13:11:00+01:002010-11-14T13:11:00+01:00Fabian Arrotintag:arrfab.net,2010-11-14:/posts/2010/Nov/14/rpmforge-el6-ppc-builds/<p>Following <a href="http://lists.rpmforge.net/pipermail/users/2010-November/003342.html">Dag's post about packages now being built for
el6</a>
(and landing in the el6 repository for x86_64 and i386) I have to say
that the ppc builds are delayed for some reasons.</p>
<p>First is the (already existing) problem with the build arch. RHEL4/5 and
6 aren't build to work on Mac ppc hardware. I was able to build the
el4/el5 packages with a minimal mock environment (using the official
RHEL tree, but reduced to contain only the ppc and noarch packages,
obviously because the ppc64 packages coudn't be installed in the chroot
environment). It was even harder with the glibc package from RHEL5
because it contains specific patches <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=181">that require Power4 or above
processor for the ppc arch</a>. I was
able to reduild it without those patches, meaning that the buildroot
isn't even 100% equal to the real RHEL 5.x tree.<br>
Now that el6 landed, i'll have a look at all these problems and try to
chase them one by one. I think that my 10+ years old mac G4 will suffer
from all these tests but that's still the machine that i use to build
the RPMforge ppc builds.</p>
<p>So my first plan is to …</p><p>Following <a href="http://lists.rpmforge.net/pipermail/users/2010-November/003342.html">Dag's post about packages now being built for
el6</a>
(and landing in the el6 repository for x86_64 and i386) I have to say
that the ppc builds are delayed for some reasons.</p>
<p>First is the (already existing) problem with the build arch. RHEL4/5 and
6 aren't build to work on Mac ppc hardware. I was able to build the
el4/el5 packages with a minimal mock environment (using the official
RHEL tree, but reduced to contain only the ppc and noarch packages,
obviously because the ppc64 packages coudn't be installed in the chroot
environment). It was even harder with the glibc package from RHEL5
because it contains specific patches <a href="http://www.arrfab.net/blog/?p=181">that require Power4 or above
processor for the ppc arch</a>. I was
able to reduild it without those patches, meaning that the buildroot
isn't even 100% equal to the real RHEL 5.x tree.<br>
Now that el6 landed, i'll have a look at all these problems and try to
chase them one by one. I think that my 10+ years old mac G4 will suffer
from all these tests but that's still the machine that i use to build
the RPMforge ppc builds.</p>
<p>So my first plan is to try to have a minimal buildroot that can be
initiliazed on that old mac (as i've still no better hardware at my
disposal ...) and once that i'll be able to have a mock buildroot
initiliazed correctly with the RHEL6 ppc only packages (if that's
possible, still something to determine), i'll process the whole RPMforge
svn tree, meaning several days/weeks for the first run (and no, i refuse
to launch a createrepo on the produced tree after each successful build
:-) )</p>
<p>If you're a RHEL ppc user and that there are some packages you really
want first (the only requests i've received directly for the el5 land
were clamav for example), feel free to ask them directly on the RPMforge
list.</p>
<p>Thanks for your comprehension : that's hard to produce such packages on
a platform not supported upstream ;-)</p>