Subject: bug#42162: gforge.inria.fr to be taken off-line in Dec. 2020

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2022 12:56:11 +0200

Hi Maxim,

On Wed, 28 Sep 2022 at 20:32, Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Can this issue be closed?

This “meta” bug raises 2 levels of issues for long-term:

 1. save the source code,
 2. save the current binary substitutes.

For #1, we have now a roadmap to tackle this via Disarchive or
sources.json and SWH [1,2].  Therefore, this point of the “meta” bug can
be closed.

However, about #2, we do not have a roadmap, AFAIK.  For instance
«Substitute retention» [3] is still an issue.  The recent outage of
Berlin exemplifies the potential problems.  (Note that because of energy
troubles in Europe, I do not exclude some potential short blackout or
power outage for short period of time of the Berlin server.)

Why kept binary substitutes?  For instance, it is not possible to
rebuild some packages on modern CPU; see OpenBLAS [4].  Therefore,
waiting a better solution, it appears to me a pragmatic solution to keep
as much substitutes as we are able to.  We do not have a clear policy
between Berlin and Bordeaux.

1: <https://forge.softwareheritage.org/T3781>
2: <https://forge.softwareheritage.org/T4538>
3: <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/42162#42>
4: <https://yhetil.org/guix/[email-masked]>

> Otherwise, what remains to be acted upon?

The next action for this #2 is to address what I sent on guix-sysadmin
about duplicating the storage of binary substitutes in some machine
offered by INRAe / Univ. of Montpellier.

And we need to draw a roadmap to tackle this #2.  Then, this “meta” bug
could be closed, IMHO.

Cheers,
simon