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Compile Farms for Commercial Software?
unix-coder asks: "How can a small software company get to 'rent' accounts for short times on a wide range of machines running different commercial Unixes with different CPUs? SourceForge's compiler farms are great for open source projects (and besides, open source projects will get ported/tested/fixed on all the platforms that matter to the people that use them). But what about commercial projects where you want to port/build/test for a wide range of architectures and OSes (AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, ...) but don't want your several server rooms full of weird hardware of your own?"
They should sell this service for closed source types. They've obviously got the know how to do it.
Yes, making money! It can be done.
http://www.testdrive.compaq.com/ might do the trick. Never used it though...
The fact that the license doesn't let you use it for commercial software.
That seemed clear enough to me.
I'd probably just tell him to buy the novel hardware. I bought a very nice Indigo2 for $400-odd a few months back, and it's a cooler experience to have the real equipment someplace.
But that's only me.
D
You have a couple of options -- you could just call the vendors and tell them that you're a VC funded software startup and you want to evaluate thair systems. They'll send you a demo unit, and you'll be able to build on their systems (for a short time). Sure, its dishonest, but I leave the ethics up to you. You could also tell them the truth -- maybe some of these struggling Unix vendors would give you a free workstation (or a deep discount on one) if you're selling 3rd party software that will enhance their platform (though its a longshot).
An alternative would be to start looking for ISP's who will sell you shell accounts on a month-to-month basis. If any of your employees are alumni of colleges and universities, some may still have accounts on legacy Unix systems...these may help too.
The downside of using shell accounts on other folks' systems for building commercial software is that you run the chance of building on inconsistent environments. This can lead to a host of problems that you will not want to deal with.
The final alternative is to go out and buy the systems (I recommend this one). It may be cheaper than you think...although the affordable systems may not be so cutting edge, I'd recommend eBay. There are tons of old SGI, HP-UX, Digital Unix, Sun, and AIX stations out there for very cheap...probably as cheap as a year's worth of shell hosting (and you'll own the machines). You'll also have the security of knowing that you're building on a "clean" environment.
I hope this helps!
-Turkey
"I'd probably just tell him to buy the novel hardware. I bought a very nice Indigo2 for $400-odd a few months back, and it's a cooler experience to have the real equipment someplace"
How is this a solution to the problem he wants solved?
He wants to test his software on many different platforms (different OSs, different CPS, multi-cpu machines), and more importantly, he wants to test it on the CURRENT platforms his (potential) customers use.
How does buying one, 10 year old machine, in anyway approximate what he needs done?
You know, maybe he can just use the Commodore 64 and Apple II I have lying in my basement.
I'm sure that VA, who is always looking for some money, would be happy to strike up some sort of arrangement. They obviously have the resources already in place.
I think it was on Slashdot that I read about a conversation between two users, one new to Unix operating systems and the other an old hand.
The new user was asking the older user why a lot of the packages had i386 in the title, warranting a reply from the experienced user of something along the lines of "because that is what they were compiled on...", leaving the new user to ponder about large farms of 386-processor machines.
Perhaps a compilation farm such as this could generate an even greater level of confusion!
This is what I did about 10 years ago, when I was selling a program on many different versions of Unix.
I bought the most common 386 unix versions (SCO Xenix, SCO Unix, 386/ix), and had one risc machine (an AViiON, since DG was my main customer base). If a user wanted an RS6000 version, I just rang my local branch of IBM, arranged a time to pop in, and compiled my latest code on a machine there. It cost IBM nothing, and may have sold a few machines for them.
I mean depending on the software, just don't support it...
Say "Hey, we made it nice and portable as we can, and it *should* work on AIX,HP-UX, etc... but has not be verified." and tell your salespeople that if customers want to run on AIX, HP-UX, etc that the QA/dev team will need some time (and a box probably) to verify everything will work smoothly for them.
Search for "sgi" and you'll find even more silicon graphics machines. Most auctions don't have "workstation" in the title.
If you really want to test compile on all those exotic UNIX platforms, that's great.
You get extra credit for thinking about cross platform portability, which is closely related to thinking ahead. You'll reap long term rewards in reduced maintenance costs from having less fragile code.
So why not go ahead and buy some of those machines used?
Through `em all together in a room with reliable power and an Ethernet switch and you'll be ready to go. Given that you can get free *NIX flavors on x86 that are good performers, the old boxes are typically quite cheap.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
How does buying one, 10 year old machine, in anyway approximate what he needs done?
Well, you don't buy a 10 year old machine. Although my roughly 10 year old SPARCstation 10 that I bought for $15 does run the latest version of Solaris easily. You can snatch 2-3 year old, viable machines off of ebay for less than $1000. This is the beauty of the UNIX/RISC workstation/server market. Used machines depreciate even faster than plain-jane consumer PCs, because most companies don't want to buy used machines, and most consumers wouldn't know what to do with them. Who's left? Developers who just need machines for testing, and crazies like myself who dream of running an IBM zSeries in my basement.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
As it happens, Irix 6.5 is the current version of Irix. There's not much you can do on a new Irix system that you can't do on an Indigo2, although of course the Indigo2 will be significantly slower.
And I did say "But that's just me", an indication that this was not a precise fit for his problem, but something worth considering. And I stand by my answer.
D