FYI: pkg 2.2.1 and official main-amd64 package builder beefy18's time frames: good news and bad news (preliminary)

From: Mark Millard <marklmi_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:29:44 UTC
Context for these comments:

https://pkg-status.freebsd.org/beefy18/build.html?mastername=main-amd64-default&build=pe02807e84be6_s24ebe9fa0ec

as of having built 31634 packages (plus 122 failed),
4336 or so packages Remaining to attempt to finish.

I'll note that the example being main-amd64, it
involves the debug FreeBSD kernel. That mixed with
the pkg 2.1+ or pkg 2.2+ involvement make for things
taking a lot longer to build overall.


The good news: The built-pkg-count vs. time curve
structure generally looks much closer to linear for
the package count involved so far, unlike the concave
up structure that pkg 2.1.* lead to. Concave-up cannot
be viable long term as the number of packages
to build increases. The scale for that issue has
shifted signifcantly in the better direction.

(There will be better data about this once the overall
build completes.)


The bad news: The basically linear rate for 2.2.1
(so far) vs. 2.0.6 for the fairly modern pkgs built
counts ends up with:

Official build examples on beefy18:
Newer, pkg 2.2.1 involvement: Built 31634 (so far) in elapsed-time 210.3 hrs or so.
Older, pkg 2.0.6 involvement: Built 35771          in elapsed-time  96.5 hrs or so.


So: the overall build had already taken more than
twice as long as it used to and still had 4336
to attempt to finish building.


ampere2'main-arm64 and main-armv7 take noticeably
longer on the slower hardware. So the above for
main-amd64 (beefy18) is likely not the worst case.

But, as ampere2 is still working on finishing with
pkg 2.1.4 for main-armv7 builds before it starts
building main-arm64 with pkg 2.2.1 involved, it
might be 4+ weeks to have that 2.2.1 example
complete and main-armv7 with pkg 2.2.1 involved
start. As stands:

Built 16638 Remaining 16109 but Elapsed 154:43:03.
(So it suggests another 150 or so hrs overall as a
quick estimate for it finishing the pkg 2.1.4 based
example.)


Note:
Builds of main-i386 (beefy17) are scheduled to stop.
So I've ignored it here, although it looks similar
to the figures for main-amd64 (beefy18).


===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com