Notes on Android call 2010/09/07

[Loïc Minier]

        Hi

== Attendees ==

 * Scott Bambrough
 * Loïc Minier
 * Yves Vandervennet

== Minutes ==

 * build and provide a downloadable Android toolchain
   * base it on our toolchain as soon as possible
 * provide a Linaro Android distribution, with a set of git trees for
   Android components
   * should use the Google trees when we don't modify them
   * could use either a set of mirrored trees, or only host modified
     trees, not sure which option is best; the former allows changing
     the base URL from the start (at the time of repo init), the latter
     would mean changing the URL at the time of repo sync
 * need a build infrastructure
   * need a way for people using the Linaro output to replicate the
     build infrastructure for daily builds, Hudson would probably do
   * wont be able to watch multiple git repos with hudson
 * need a kernel tree
   * want a consolidated linux-linaro-android tree, just like
     linux-linaro
     * should track at least the Android kernel tree
     * can't target Android development tree because it's not public
     * do we want to rebase on newer linux kernels, i.e. newer than
       Android provides?
       * main use case would be the devicetree stuff; that one is really
         easy to backport, so might not be a good idea to move Android
         forward
 * Freescale's needs are mostly on the multimedia side, with the
   OpenCore framework in particular, since it seems like a poor fit for
   hardware accelerators
   * mostly interested in basing on a regular Android build, and trying
     to swap OpenCore with something else, or integrate existing stuff
     into OpenCore
 * are there some needs with current architecture which need to complete
   * SMP safety of bionic library; might be a good topic
   * hard-float?  NEON?  is this well supported in Android?  probably
     just in isolated places, in isolated libraries
   * dalvik would probably break with hard-float
 * what kind of licensing constraints should we operated under?
   * Freescale didn't get any pushback on GPL stuff from OEMs so far; at
     least not on u-boot
 * are there needs to extend the Android architecture to cover new type
   of hardware in upcoming SoCs?  e.g. new type of hardware accelerators
   or something like that?
   * apparently, not that much in the pipe; everything seems covered by
     Android already
 * are TSCMs interested mostly looking at phones or tablets?
   * mostly tables and not phones in the case of Freescale
 * what's more important?  improving the runtime or improving the
   development experience and services?
   * a faster build would be nice; that is, compilation is really slow
   * the overall process is too long between the time where people start
     cloning and the time they have builds
     * could improve source code overlays
     * could provide pre-built Android parts
     * could provide infrastructure to fork source trees into multiple
       projects and do fast server-side builds
   * not clear how the development experience would look like with
     remote builds; would help in download and build time, but might be
     clumsy
   * can use adb with local builds to push modified files directly
 * which devices do we need to cover?
   * beagleboard -- would probably work in QEMU
   * google nexus one
   * should probably cover vexpress and imx51 babbage
   * should we do intel builds?  might not be a good idea for an ARM
     group  :-)  Freescale didn't need to do any Intel builds at least
     * main advantage is that they work on more hardware and so support
       more devices etc.
   * should enable more people to build for their devices rather than
     doing it all ourselves
 * strong desire to see the Android kernel patches upstreamed
 * performance is probably the biggest thing which vendors care about,
   not infrastructure or features; in particular boot time and power
   management and execution speed
 * middleware
   * web browser
     * accelerated rendering: leveraging the GPU for page rendering
   * telephony
   * graphics stack
 * should probably explore with other vendors and TSCMs, especially
   company selling *phones* with android
 * improving the Android architecture is more of a topic for later

    Cheers,
-- 
Loïc Minier