Linaro 13.08 released

People with goals succeed because they know where they're going. ~Earl Nightingale

The Linaro 13.08 release is now available for download!

The 13.08 release includes the "beta" version of the Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK), the big.LITTLE MP patchset available in both LSK and Linux Linaro 3.11-rc6, and sees the first major output from the Linaro Networking Group (LNG).

Over the past few months, the LSK team has been developing a process to build and maintain a stable kernel based on the latest LTS kernel serie and has produced monthly interim LSK releases since May to verify the process. On August 4th, Greg Kroah ­Hartman announced 3.10 as the next long-­term stable (LTS) kernel series and this means the LSK team is able to produce a preview LSK release, based on the 3.10.9 stable kernel. Next month's 13.09 delivery will be the first official LSK release. The LSK git repository is located at: https://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=kernel/linux-linaro-stable.git

This release includes a significant amount of work from the Linaro Networking Group (LNG), which was established in February. LNG moved its kernels to 3.10.6 and 3.10.6 + rt3 and the real time (PREEMPT_RT) patch set for 3.10.6 + rt3 became available. Work on the Linaro OpenEmbedded baseline progressed rapidly with the merging of the meta-bigendian layer and booting of the LNG images based on this baseline on the Arndale board.

The Linaro Enterprise Group continued to build on its work in earlier releases, but a key highlight was getting the Continuous Integration (CI) loop for OpenJDK-8 on ARMv8 up and running. Work remains to get all the tests passing and to amplify the range of the test suites used. In addition, the patch set enabling bit sliced AES for NEON have been completed and merged upstream in the OpenSSL project.

We encourage everybody to use the 13.08 release. The download links for all images and components are available on our downloads page:

http://www.linaro.org/downloads/

See the detailed highlights of this release to get an overview of what has been accomplished by the Working Groups, Landing Teams and Platform Teams:

== Android Engineering ==

* Android stack was tuned to achieve 100% CTS pass result on Android 4.3 * Analyzing the UEFI EDK II boot loader for Android completed, implementation of fastboot application and USB drivers in progress.

== Builds and Baselines ==

* Linaro Stable Kernel ('''beta''') 3.10.9-2013.08 released * Based on 3.10.9 stable tree * big.LITTLE support: * ARM MP patch set * IKS * VExpress TC2 support * Power efficient workqueue support * Android v3.10 experimental patch set from AOSP * Interactive scheduler enhancements for big.LITTLE * Linux Linaro 3.11-rc6-2013.08 released * based on linux-linaro-core-tracking tree, llct-20130820.0 tag: * based on v3.11-rc6 * gator version 5.15 (same version as in 13.06 release) * updated linaro-android-3.11 topic by John Stultz * new big-little-mp topic from ARM LT replaced the big-LITTLE-MP-master-v* used before * updated big-LITTLE-pmu, iks, and iks-cpufreq topics from ARM LT * binder 64 bit patch * updated interactive-gov-updates topic from Viresh Kumar * basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT * updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT * updated arndale/exynos patches from Samsung LT * vexpress64 support (both RTSM and Foundation model) * config fragments changes: * omap4.conf is no longer used for PandaBoard: new omap2plus.conf and panda.conf have been created (to make tracking the community changes easier) * Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.08 released * includes latest Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.08 release * improving optimizations and improving Aarch64 support * Linaro Android baseline updates * Android Baselines updated to Android 4.3 for all the Engineering and Member builds * Android builds updated to build with Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.08 release * Helper scripts developed to boot Android over NFS * Fujitsu member build is set up with complete CI loop * Android NDK (Native Development Kit) based on Linaro Toolchain is delivered * Linaro OpenEmbedded baseline updates * Update to Linaro GCC 4.8-2013.08 release * Remove meta-openembedded/toolchain layer * Add meta-bigendian to default layers * Add meta-filesystems layer * Whitelist non-commercial license on all images * Add Fedora (host) support and clean up dependencies based on Yocto Project Reference Manual * New leg-java images have builds of openjdk-7 and openjdk-8 * Python (2.7.3) available in LAMP image * Engineering builds for Networking (big endian and little endian) are built daily * Linaro Ubuntu baseline updates * CI loop has been improved: packages can be cross-built and uploaded to repo.linaro.org. * Calxeda EnergyCore (Highbank) CI loop is completed * Fujitsu member build is set up with complete CI loop * package updates: libvirt updated to 1.1.1; openssl (include support for ARM NEON based bit sliced AES in XTS mode, contributed from LEG)

== Kernel ==

* Started making progress on kexec 64 support * Posted uprobes32 code for public review * Started testing of randconfig on ARM32 to find random build issues * Device Tree bindings for Android keyreset merged for 3.12 * option to log time spent in suspend delivered in 3.11 * fixed vfat get volume id ioctl and delivered in 3.11 mainline

== LAVA ==

* LAVA Lab * LNG isolated performance test rack starting to come together * LAVA Core * Improved complete-log view (added links for Line/Section #s) * Interactive bootloader commands working on all devices * Added support for Android platforms * New action: deploy_linaro_image has been added * Allows provisioning of kernel, ramdisk, dtb, bootloader, firmware, and rootfs using TFTP * KVM/QEMU supported * lava-test-shell supported with minimal busybox ramdisk * TI Keystone II integrated into LAVA * Fujitsu AA9 integrated into LAVA * Supports Android * Automated functional LAVA testing * Checks for regressions by running common LAVA jobs * Multi-Node support in final days of staging verification. Production release scheduled immediately after release week. * Review feedback and start a plan to revamp the LAVA documentation * Draft Outline created * Added capability to integrate LAVA instance with Google Analytics * Linaro Infrastructure * Beta staging git services released to improve Linaro git services * Output manifest from Android builds now includes repository/branch descriptions.

== LEG ==

* XTS chaining mode for the NEON accelerated AES in OpenSSL was released. Refer to https://wiki.linaro.org/Internal/People/ArdBiesheuvel/BitSlicedAESEncryption for more details on the NEON work done for AES, using bit slicing. * The CI loop for openJDK is now in place - work remains to get all the tests passing and to amplify the range of the test suites used. See https://validation.linaro.org/dashboard/image-reports/leg-java-armv8

== LNG ==

* The real time patch set for 3.10.6 + rt3 became available and LNG moved its stable kernels to 3.10.6 and 3.10.6 + rt3 * The CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL config fragment resulted in bug 1215507 in the preempt rt image, and so NO_HZ has been disabled * The CI loop now runs the LTP and LTP real-time regression test suites against the LNG Kernels * LNG image based on Linaro OpenEmbedded baseline boots on Arndale * Building with the debug flags enabled resulted in a bug 215471 - deadlock when CONFIG_KEYBOARD_GPIO is enabled with debug on. * meta-bigendian layer has been merged in Linaro OpenEmbedded baseline

== Power Management ==

* Linaro Powerdebug 0.7.0-2013.08 released * add gpio modification function * Linaro Powertop 2.2-2013.08 released * upstream branch rebased to mainline * Linaro PM QA 0.4.3-2013.08 released * fix an Android runtime failure

== QA ==

* Successfully completed 13.08 release testing on Android (linux-linaro and LSK), Ubuntu and OpenEmbedded baselines. Test results and bug reports have been shared. * Manual PXE on UEFI testing was performed on Versatile Express A9 board. * Test planning completed for LSK * Test planning completed for Networking Group (LNG)

== Toolchain ==

* Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.08 released, based off the latest GCC 4.8.1+svn201477 release. * Updates to GCC 4.8.1+svn201477 * Improved shrink-wrapping optimization * Improved tail-calls optimization * Improved AArch64 support (instructions, intrinsics) * Improved AArch64 vectorizer cost model * Backports for bug fixes * Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.08 released, based off the latest GCC 4.7.3+svn201655 release. * GCC: * Shrink-wrapping support for ARM backported to 2013.08 and issues fixed * Value range propagation patches posted for review * Libraries and Developer Tools: * Improved strlen patches posted upstream * LLVM: * Added support for __aeabi_divmod

== Virtualization ==

* Final version of HYP mode switching support for ARMv7-A is ready and went upstream. * ARMv7 Guest Migration (same HW/SW) functionality implementation is ready and now is being upstreamed. * hackbench is configured in LAVA for testing KVM; also added to CI loop.

The release details are linked from the “Details” column for each released artifact on the release information:

http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1308/Release#Release_Information

Using the Android-based images =======================

The Android-based images come in three parts: system, userdata and boot. These need to be combined to form a complete Android install. For an explanation of how to do this please see:

http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/ImageInstallation

If you are interested in getting the source and building these images yourself please see the following pages:

http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/GetSource http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/BuildSource

Using the OpenEmbedded-based images =======================

With the Linaro provided downloads and with ARM’s Fast Models virtual platform, you can boot a virtual ARMv8 system and run 64-bit binaries.

For more information please see:

http://www.linaro.org/engineering/armv8

Using the Ubuntu-based images =======================

The Ubuntu-based images consist of two parts. The first part is a hardware pack, which can be found under the hwpacks directory and contains hardware specific packages (such as the kernel and bootloader). The second part is the rootfs, which is combined with the hardware pack to create a complete image. For more information on how to create an image please see:

http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/Ubuntu/ImageInstallation

Getting involved ============

More information on Linaro can be found on our websites:

* Homepage: http://www.linaro.org * Wiki: http://wiki.linaro.org

Also subscribe to the important Linaro mailing lists and join our IRC channels to stay on top of Linaro developments:

* Announcements: http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-announce

* Development: http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev

* IRC: #linaro on irc.linaro.org or irc.freenode.net #linaro-android irc.linaro.org or irc.freenode.net

Known issues with this release =====================

For any errata issues, please see:

http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1308/Release#Known_Issues

Bug reports for this release should be filed in Launchpad against the individual packages that are affected. If a suitable package cannot be identified, feel free to assign them to:

http://www.launchpad.net/linaro