cross-distro November 2012

cross-distro@lists.linaro.org

6 participants
6 discussions

by Jon Masters

Hi Folks, I propose the following triplet for Fedora on AArch64: aarch64-redhat-linux-gnu Skipping the vendor part, that means generally: aarch64-linux-gnu There should be no reason to deviate from this. I'm putting it out there now because I don't want another ARMv7 experience later :) Jon.

12 years, 1 month

Fwd: AArch64 triplet

by Jon Masters

Meant to reply to the list. Begin forwarded message: > From: Jon Masters <jonathan(a)jonmasters.org> > Subject: Re: AArch64 triplet > Date: November 22, 2012 3:32:45 AM EST > To: Mike Frysinger <vapier(a)gentoo.org> > > > On Nov 20, 2012, at 1:27 PM, Mike Frysinger <vapier(a)gentoo.org> wrote: > >> On Tuesday 20 November 2012 03:25:56 Jon Masters wrote: >>> The only reason for making a change at this time appears to be cosmetic, >>> for removing /lib for example. I can understand that, and if we were >>> discussing this a year ago (or even months ago when I first raised it on >>> this list), then it might be a reasonable change, but at this time I >>> cannot find an overwhelming technical justification. >> >> i don't think removal of /lib/ is really feasible. that's the path that gets >> used for firmware (/lib/firmware/) and kernel modules (/lib/modules/<kver>/) >> regardless of the default ABI on the system. >> >> similarly, userspace packages are using that path for supplemental files like >> the bootloader (grub) or ABI-independent settings (udev rules). > > Sorry for the confusion. By "getting rid" what I mean is not having libraries in there. As is obvious, there will always be plenty of stuff in there, and it's mandated by standards anyway. So, really, if it's down to whether we (Fedora) have one thing in /lib that could be in /lib64 vs. not then I would rather just keep the dynamic linker where it is in /lib and move on with life. > > By the way, we announced our initial Fedora bootstrap work tonight. The wiki has a lot of information about what is currently being done, along with initial images that will grow: > > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/AArch64 > > Jon. >

12 years, 1 month

Re: FOSDEM 2013

by Philippe De Swert

Hi, On 19/11/2012, Andrew Wafaa <andrew.wafaa(a)arm.com> wrote: > It's only a few months until the land of waffles, chocolate and beer (to > name a few of their fine products) hosts one of Europe's great Open Source > events - FOSDEM [0]. I have submitted two talk proposals for the > Distribution track, one around the status of ARMv7, and one around ARMv8; I > believe there will also be a talk from Debian's one and only Wookey around > bootstrapping ARMv8. Related to that there is also the embedded and mobile room which is interested in similar things. So if you're not building complete distros that is the place to be ;) =================================================================== Every year there is a special dedicated track for embedded and mobile projects at Fosdem (see: www.fosdem.org ). If you are interested to highlight or give a talk about your project check out the cfp. FOSDEM will be held the 2nd and 3th of February 2013 in Brussels, Belgium. As usual and for the 10th time there will be an embedded and mobile room. For this years program we are looking for people who would like to do a presentation about their or their community's projects in this area. These projects must be Free Software or Open Source. For example involvement and experiences with projects like Arduino, Tizen, Jolla, Mer, Beagleboard, Openembedded, Android, OpenWrt, Yocto, Linaro... Kernel hacks for maximising memory usage, using filesystems on flash, power management, ... We are also interested in short tutorials, project overviews, achievements, ports to new hardware and hardware hacking, real life deployments, ... all are welcome and all submissions will be reviewed by our panel. Submissions require a small abstract and short speaker presentation and should be submitted to fosdem.embedded at gmail.com before the 25th of December 2012 The panel consists of: Philippe De Swert Peter De Schrijver Geert Uytterhoeven Thomas Pettazoni

12 years, 1 month

FOSDEM 2013

by Andrew Wafaa

Aloha all, It's only a few months until the land of waffles, chocolate and beer (to name a few of their fine products) hosts one of Europe's great Open Source events - FOSDEM [0]. I have submitted two talk proposals for the Distribution track, one around the status of ARMv7, and one around ARMv8; I believe there will also be a talk from Debian's one and only Wookey around bootstrapping ARMv8. As the talks are being proposed in the Distribution track, it would be great if we could get as many people from different distros interested in ARM to join in the discussions and work to a common goal. If the talks are not accepted for whatever reason, I would still like to have as many people as possible in a face to face discussions about the trials and tribulations of getting Linux on ARM to work - please note this will be focussed on the ARM architecture and not the architecture of distro components, so leave any GNOME/KDE/systemd/upstart/udev/*kit/etc angst at home please :) Hope to see you in Brussels in February, Andy 0 - http://fosdem.org/2013/

12 years, 1 month

Minutes from the ARMv8 Distributions session at Connect (2012-10-30)

by Steve McIntyre

[ Based heavily on notes from http://summit.linaro.org/lce12/meeting/21345/armv8-mini-summit-4/ but etherpad data has a lovely habit of going away over time... ] This was an AArch64-specific distribution planning and discussion session on Tuesday morning as part of the v8 mini-summit; there was also a general cross-distro session on Monday for discussion about ARM issues. I've already posted those minutes. Familiar faces from Debian, Red Hat, SuSe and Ubuntu lead a discussion about the where these distributions have got with thinking about AArch64, the challenges that they face and how the community can get involved Recap of cross-distro session on Monday: * Project is set up for sharing bugs and patches for ARMv8. * Suggested way of working is to file a bug in distro-specific bug tracker, and also one in the common bug trackers. * There is already a Linaro cross-distro mailing list - currently very low traffic. AArch64 support in packages =========================== Biggest issue seen to date (Fedora) is the number of packages that have not reconfigured to pick up the aarch64 target. Jon suggested using an LWN article perhaps to publicise the need for upstream code to update their config. * There has been some discussion as happened on autoconf mailing list to try and get around the non-update of many packages config * Using autoreconf automatically for all packages is a big risk, but might kinda work for the time being? (This is what happens by default in OE, with a blacklist to disable autoreconf where it's known to break.) * There remains the issue of getting the upstream packages fixed * Identifying which packages need to be fixed is not a simple task * Suggestion: start with a list of those packages which absolutely require fixing (on Linaro wiki), handle many cases using a change to autoconf to use a config variable Cross-distro compatibility ========================== How do we make sure that software built on one distro can install and run on others? * Key aspects are decided already: the GNU triplet and the runtime linker path (phew!) * Jon suggests using LSB to provide that compatibility baseline. It might be a large piece of work. Some ARMv8 market segments are likely to require LSB, so this work will have to be done. * Need regular (monthly) testing of sets of binaries across other distros - don't wait for LSB. Contents of the test set TBD later, but start from something simple. Perhaps hello-world, binutils, gcc, perl, python, ruby. Maybe run a regular bake-off/plug-fest? * How do we get distro images while the distros are under construction? Should Linaro do this or should each distro run the tests from other distros on their own images? Consensus seems to be that Linaro can help with the testing, writing scripts etc. to do some of the work, but it's up to the distros to share their images and software periodically then do the N-way testing. Fedora has a git repo of the file system, and plans to provide tarballs of this in the future. Issues/problems? ================ Is anything blocking progress for the building? * What's the timeline for QEMU? + It requires enough details about the instruction set (ARMv8 Architecture Architecture Manual) + Who would do this work? + Linaro could/should provide some coordination of the effort. * There's (obviously) no hardware available yet. Using models to build software is not very attractive! + How much do you need before you can use a highly parallel build system (lots of models)? Generally, the number seems to be 300 packages (except Fedora with systemd's 1500 dependencies - some tinkering may be needed!). + Parallel building is still some time away... * A decent bootloader. When will we have UEFI working? + People are working on it, coming Real Soon Now! + It would be nice to avoid the proliferation of boot loaders common on 32-bit ARM now Involvement =========== How can other developers get involved? * The availability of the Foundation model and the initial images makes this possible * In reality most packages do not need significant work to make them build, a small number will have to be ported to AArch64, and a larger numer will benefit from AArch64 specific code. * With the public model and code, it makes sense to start publishing the distro code for wider use ASAP. Next steps ========== * At the next Connect, there should be distro code that runs on ARMv8. * Linaro should coordinate and help with the cross-distro testing. * Planning will be done via the cross-distro mailing list. Cheers, -- Steve McIntyre steve.mcintyre(a)linaro.org <http://www.linaro.org/> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs

12 years, 2 months

Minutes from the Cross-Distro session at Connect (2012-10-29)

by Steve McIntyre

[ Based on notes from http://summit.linaro.org/lce12/meeting/20963/cross-distro-standardisation-d… but etherpad data has a lovely habit of going away over time... ] This was a general cross-distro session for discussion about ARM issues. There was also a more AArch64-specific session on Tuesday morning as part of the v8 mini-summit; I'll post notes from that next! Distros/groups represented ========================== * Debian * Ubuntu * Fedora * Baserock * openSUSE * OpenEmbedded Existing ports ============== v7 hard-float is basically done by everybody. Steve McIntyre mopping up last bits (glibc/binutils/ABI doc, mostly multiarch/multilib cleanup). TODO: it would be nice to get the binutils hf/sf ABI patches into the binutils 2.23 branch. It looks like the runtime linker stuff is just about finished! Question about Cortex-A15 kernel support, especially LPAE. Looks like distros will need to ship 2 kernels for ARMv7 in this case: LPAE/non-LPAE. There is no current way to merge these, and no plans. ARMv8/AArch64/arm64 =================== Many distributions are starting work on porting to AArch64. Linaro have released an initial OpenEmbedded-based filesystem which will work in ARM's v8 models. Toolchains are available too: http://www.linaro.org/engineering/armv8 Hopefully this will help the distros bootstrap. There are "aarch64" tags that should be used when filing bugs in various Linaro projects (gcc-linaro, linux-linaro, linaro-oe, etc.) There's also a shared bug tracker at https://launchpad.net/linaro-aarch64 for distros to use, so we don't waste time working in parallel on the same bugs for AArch64 support. When using this, please file bug reports in-distro first and link to these. Once fixes are accepted upstream, mark the linaro-aarch64 bugs fixed. Distro AArch64 status ===================== * Ubuntu: * http://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port * https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/CrossCompile/arm64bootstrap * Raring has all components required for armv8 cross toolchain * Debian * http://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port * Fedora * Jon Masters has scanned the package set for assembler code, identifying probable pain-points Tools ===== Steve working on strace support - 64-bit is done, working on using 64-bit strace with 32-bit binaries next. Ptrace patches for gdb are submitted, but until things stabilise people will need to match up kernel and tools to get things working here. Standard install instructions for distros? ========================================== Some discussion about how different various of the ARM boards are in terms of setup; could/should we talk to them and give recommendations on making them easier to work with? Ideas: * Default boot process in server world is UEFI+GRUB. Stick with that. * Partition layout recommondation (FAT partition for UEFI?) * Would distros and board makers follow such doc if it existed or will everyone prefer to "add value" in this area? * Linaro should write doc with default recommendations, which in long term should reduce variation and feed into SOC manufacturer boot code Network booting =============== Lots of people are interested in this, especially for installing clusters of machines like Calxeda/Dell offerings. How should people do this? 'Use PXE' doesn't really help. There is PXE support in uboot, developed by Calxeda. Is anybody working on PXE support in UEFI? Linaro Enterprise Group should... We could do with some recommendations for how this area should work - prod the LEG people! Cheers, -- Steve McIntyre steve.mcintyre(a)linaro.org <http://www.linaro.org/> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs

12 years, 2 months

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cross-distro November 2012