Re: [HACKERS] Compile timing

Jan Wieck wrote:
> Lamar, shouldn't you run at least the regression suite too
> before building the rpm's?

Well, once the compile passes regression on a particular architecture,
IMO it doesn't need to be done for every compile of that version of
PostgreSQL.

However, as part of the testing for the built RPM's, I do run the
regression tests (which I have packaged into the RPM set --
postgresql-test) before releasing. The regression tests don't take too
long (unless I run bigtest).

Running regression as part of the RPM build is a possibility, however.

As it stands, Intel fails two tests (float8 and geometry) and Alpha
fails two tests (geometry and another one that I can't remember right
now) -- one of which is due to the documented problem with sort order on
the Alpha (Uncle George has thoroughly covered that topic, recently).

The RPM building development cycle is a little different than most.
RPM's are built in a fully automatic fashion -- a single command
invocation (rpm -ba postgresql.spec) compiles, mungs, and packages all
the way to the binary RPM's, then it cleans up. Getting to that point,
however, can be a challenge, as some patches are necessary to get a
build in the FHS-compliant RedHat environment. It took me about 2 hours
to get a good build of 6.5.2, due to the need for a couple of Makefile
patches in the perl client (in particular, the src/interfaces Makefile
issues a 'perl5 makefile.pl' command, when there is no executable on
RedHat 6 named perl5), along with some other munging that had to be
done.

I have to think in the mindset of a packager, not a developer, when
doing this -- but I have to also keep up with development in order to
package. And I LOVE it!

So, in short, every binary RPM set I build for RedHat 6 has been
installed on my personal laptop running a close to virgin RedHat 6
installation -- and has had regression run. The set built for RedHat
5.2 has had the same thing done on my inhouse utility machine, which is
a puny little machine (486/100 with 16MB). It takes almost two hours to
build the binary RPM set on that machine. But, then again, that is also
my amanda server and is quite loaded.

Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio