Re: [PATCH] gnu: boost: Update to 1.61.0.

[Andreas Enge]

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