PPC platforms as part of standard release

[mhdawson]

I'd like to list the things that need to get done so that we can get to the point where the PPC platforms are part of the standard release.

What I have on the list so far is

1. Release machines. Need an additional LE and BE machine to be used for releases only
2. Additional test machines. Need to have 2 LE and 2 BE machines, currently there is only 1 of each
3. Need to add testing on PPC to node-test-pull-request
4. Tests passing (they all do now except for test-tick-processor (test-tick-processor failures on PPC node#2957)

Can people chime in on what else I'll need to add to this list.

[rvagg]

sounds reasonable to me, what strings would we use in binary names for these? ppcbe and ppcle? what is standard practice for these?

[bnoordhuis]

ppc, ppc64, ppcel and ppc64el?

Does little-endian 32 bits PowerPC exist? I don't think I've ever seen it.

[mhdawson]

There is no 32bit LE version only 64 bit. For both BE and LE initially we'd only be looking to include 64 bit. 32 bit does not exist for LE and on BE it is lower priority due to the level of use.

I'd suggest we use these names ppc64 and ppcle64

[bnoordhuis]

Interesting how I made the same typo twice, I intended to write 'ppc64le'.... Anyone have data on what is more common, ppcle64 or ppc64le? I've seen both used.

[jbergstroem]

Wikipedia and some linux dists seems to point to ppc64le.

[mhdawson]

Talked to our lead from the power side and it should be ppc64le

[mhdawson]

Added 2 additional machines to the CI, one for BE and one for LE so we have the machines needed on the regression test side. They are already up and running in the CI, last step is to just add to the ansible inventory - PR here - mhdawson@e6e3747

Will need to get 2 more for releases

[mhdawson]

I now have 2 additional machines for releases. What is the process of getting them configured/added to wherever they need to go ? @rvagg Johan suggested you'd probably be the right person to answer that

[rvagg]

first step is getting them into nightly builds, I'm going to work on that this week and will ping you when I'm onto it

[mhdawson]

Is getting them into the nighties something I could help out with ?

[rvagg]

@mhdawson: first thing I'm noticing is that they're taking a very long time to clone the repo, could you put a bare mirror on them to speed it up please?

mkdir /home/iojs/git/
git clone https://github.com/nodejs/node.git --mirror /home/iojs/git/io.js.reference

the job is set up to use refs found in that location when cloning so it ends up only getting any newer commits for each build.

Next, they are missing $ARCH and $DESTCPU environment variables:

https://ci.nodejs.org/job/iojs+release/275/nodes=ppcle-ubuntu1404-release-64/console

ARCH is mainly used in determining the filename (i.e. we have x86, x64, armv6l, etc.) while DESTCPU is what configure cares about, often they are the same.

This can be done in the startup configuration for the service somewhere (@jbergstroem has stronger opinions on what the correct way to do this is than me), or even in the slave config in Jenkins were you set custom environment variables.

I see we allow ppc64 and ppc in both configure and Makefile but we have both ppcbe and ppcle machines and both are 64-bit, what is the intention here? What binaries are you wanting to produce for download and what do you think their names should be?

[mhdawson]

We only have 64 bit machines and based on the conversation that was started when I investigated getting a second set for 32 bit to be consistent with other architectures the feedback from the Power team was that 64 bit is what matters (it does not exist at all for LE). Based on that I was looking to have only the 64 bit BE and 64 LE platforms as part of the standard releases.

The names should be ppc64le and ppc64

[mhdawson]

Looking at the download links as an example I was thinking along these lines:

https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.2.2/node-v4.2.2-linux-ppc64.tar.gz
https://nodejs.org/dist/v4.2.2/node-v4.2.2-linux-ppc64le.tar.gz

Is that what you were looking for in terms of the naming. Next I'll have to see how that works out in terms of what we want for $DESTCPU and $ARCH

[mhdawson]

I think what we want is:

BE:
DESTCPU = ppc64
ARCH = ppc64

LE:
DESTCPU=ppc64
ARCH = ppc64le

I see at least ARCH is set as environment variables for Windows in jenkins so I'll so ahead and do that and we can update if Johan suggests a better way

I'll add those