On Wed, Mar 4, 2026 at 2:41 AM Kashyap Chamarthy <[email protected]> wrote: > > (Cross-posting from the Fedrao Discusson forum: > https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/primary-vs-alternative-architectures-clarity-on-requirements/182392; > feel free to respond there or here.) > > This is a follow-up from yesterday's FESCo meeting (look for "primary > arches" in the meeting log[1]. The current documentation[2] for what > makes an architecture "primary" vs. "alternative" (or "secondary") seems > to be outdated and needs some rework. > > Two tiers of architectures > -------------------------- > > Let's see what we have *today*. Quoting from the structure[3] section > of the architectures wiki: > > "There are two tiers of architectures with Fedora support: > > "Primary Architectures : These are architectures with the majority > of the users, the most common architectures. Build failures on these > architectures are fatal: no packages push to the repositories if > they fail to build for a primary architecture. Fedora package > maintainers are required to make sure that their package builds > properly for this architecture (or is properly ExcludeArch'd). > > "Alternative Architectures : These are architectures with motivated > Architecture Maintainer Teams. There are two classes of Alternative > Architecturs, the ones built in Primary koji where build failures > are fatal and ones built on their own koji instances where build > failures on the alternative architecture are not fatal: if packages > successfully build for the primary koji, they push independently of > any alternative architecture build successes or failures." > > The main takeway from the above is that for "primary" architectures, the > build failures block main deliverables, while alternative arches don't. > > * * * > > Elsewhere on Fedora Matrix, @kevin explained that there was a time where > an architecture was "primary" for *some* deliverables and "secondary" > for others, which muddies the waters further. > > The aim of this thread is to dispel this confusion and bring some > clarity based on current practices. Once the dust settles, update the > architectures[2] >
Today, I would say the only meaningful separation of architecture levels is at the Koji level. If there is a separate Koji instance, it is secondary and non-blocking. Every architecture today in primary Koji cannot actually fail, and therefore effectively operates as primary architectures. That is the reality and that's what the document should say. (And yes, this means I am also against importing RISC-V into the main Koji for the time being. I do not know if I would be okay with bringing it into main Koji for several years, as past investment performance with other architectures is not a good inspiration of confidence for this.) -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth! -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/infra/tickets/issues/new
