Opt-in as distributed builder
Timalex opened this issue · 4 comments
Maybe it could be useful if users could opt-in to provide processing power to a build farm.
This supposedly could shorten the build time for large packages like Chromium.
Already having isolated build environments should of course help.
I wouldn't mind sparing some CPU time and memory for the Solus project.
Apparently there is already a distributed compiler, Icecream, which is used for building Chromium.
It would be cool, pun intended, if it was possible to opt-in to something like this in Solus and act as a remote build server when under light loads.
Previously posted on Phabricator
But how do I trust these builds? It would, at the very least require reproducible builds and building the same package on at least 2 independent computers to verify.
Even then I wouldn't really trust the packages.
Good question, independent peer review would make it more trusted. And if they truly are independent it should be of less concern. There might also be some additional verification before it's released publicly.
Seems a very dangerous road to me. Right now we have trusted builders, and we have peer review at the source package level, before it's built and sent off. Nobody has the means by which to inject builds.
This could be seen as a way to quickly make several "trial builds" and when it compiles to satisfaction there would be an official build by a trusted builder. It would be desirable to enhance the existing process where all the checks are already in place.