“A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.“ ~ Colin Powell
The Linaro 12.10 release is now available!
The Linaro 12.10 release cycle highlights the determination and hard work of all the Linaro Teams – Working Groups, Landing Teams and Platform Teams – who have provided all the updates and new features that are integrated on top of Android and Ubuntu during this development cycle. The 12.10 release is another example of how Linaro works together with its members, partners and community to continue to build the future of Linux on ARM.
On the ARMv8 front, Linaro is now making early ARMv8 images available to interested developers. For a primer on the ARMv8 architecture, the AArch64 execution state and the A64 instruction set, please visit the ARM portal: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/instruction-set-architectures/armv8-a... While there is currently no ARMv8 hardware available, ARM and Linaro have developed support for AArch64/A64 against virtual platforms and started sending the resulting patches to various open source projects. With the Linaro provided downloads and with ARM’s Fast Models virtual platform, you may boot a virtual ARMv8 system and run 64-bit binaries. These downloads are currently in beta, but they should just work and we are looking towards including them as part of our monthly releases. For more information on these ARMv8 images, please take a look at the Linaro Engineer pages on the Linaro website: http://www.linaro.org/engineering/armv8
Work on big.LITTLE continues as the Linaro Kernel Working Group highlights its completion of TC2 support; noting that TC2 now boots with the latest IKS tree. Five new test cases have been added to handle simultaneous thread switching, important bugs such as Switcher Thumb-2 bug and Switcher deadlock issue when working on the memblock_steal(), vlock remaining locked under certain conditions were fixed along with and updated focus to run benchmarks with the latest IKS on TC2 to find optimization opportunities.
While some wondered if the idea of a consolidated kernel in the ARM ecosystem would remain a dream and something developers only longed for, the Linaro Kernel Working Group continues to work toward making that dream a reality and during the 12.10 Linaro development cycle announced that they will demo their work on their continued efforts on the single zImage kernel. Mark Orvek, Director for the Kernel Working Group at Linaro in a Google+ Hangout on Air discussion hinted to what attendees could expect to see at the LCE 12 -Copenhagen Demo Friday event. Orvek indicated that Deepak Saxena would be demo'ing a single kernel across several member boards. The full recorded Hangout is available on: http://youtu.be/t71JNNO6IDo
We encourage everybody to use the 12.10 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 * Linaro Android 12.10 has been upgraded to 4.1.1_r6 and then to 4.1.2. * Linaro Android builds are now shipped with improved instructions. * AOSP Galaxy Nexus builds are available from http://android-build.linaro.org and include DS-5 support. * Linaro Android toolchain has been updated to Linaro GCC 2012.10. * Dalvik benchmarked against Hard-FLoat Open JDK and Java SE. * Power meter improvements for LAVA automation. * Prepared Connect demonstrations * benchmarking methods and how it automates benchmarks. * Galaxy Nexus builds. * Hybrid Android: an Android build with a toolchain installed, an editor to edit code and other utilities to develop on an Android box. * power meter, based on NI equipement.
* Developer Platform * OpenEmbedded now contains the 64-ready components for the ARMv8 bootstrap (Minimal, SDK and LAMP images published). * Package and components for the big.LITTLE project were updated based on the requirements for the 12.10 development cycle. * AArch64 Quantal image containing build-essential is now available, with instructions at https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/CrossCompile/arm64bootstrap * Linux Linaro tree updated with the latest kernel development topics provided by Linaro, and also against the final v3.6 upstream release. * Linux Linaro, based on linux-linaro-core-tracking tree * based on v3.6 * includes 3.6.1 stable release * config fragments (config-core-tracking topic) * emmc patches from Kernel WG * updated linaro-android-3.6-jstultz-rebase topic * gator version 5.11 * ubuntu-sauce-3.6 * big-LITTLE-MP version 10 * updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT * updated Origen patches from Samsung LT * updated Android kernel config for Snowball from STE LT * Linux Linaro tracking, v3.4 based * updated tilt-3.4 topic from TI LT; now includes the 3.4.14 stable release.
* Infrastructure * Improved Linaro image tools validation. A CI has been set up to detect regressions and ensure older released images can always be generated. * Improve instructions provided on releases.linaro.org, snapshots.linaro.org and android-build.linaro.org. As an example, see http://releases.linaro.org/12.10/android/vexpress
* Kernel * Continue work on consolidation/cleanup for single zImage * Converted clock lookups for Ux500 http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=135091433920465&w=2 * Converting Ux500 to SPARSE_IRQ http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=135058075015142&w=2 * Converted Exynos to common clock framework http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=134963007028275&w=2
* Power Management * v10 of the b.L MP patchset was integrated into LLCT. It contains updated versions of the following patchsets: PMU, load tracking, task placement.
* Toolchain * Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.10, updated to GCC 4.7.2+svn191881 * Improve performance by using VLD1 instead of VLDM for NEON quad loads. * LP: #1053348: binary files are not merged from the FSF branches - Fixed. * Linaro GCC 4.6 2012.10, updates to 4.6.3+svn191880. * LP: #1029454 cselim tree optimizer generates incorrect code - Fixed. * Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2012.10, updated to latest Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.10.
* LAVA * Add a new mechanism to test Android, Ubuntu, and OpenEmbedded images. * Support for testing ARMv8 Foundation Models. * New router for the Validation lab deployed. * WiFi access point is now connected to the internet and is used in Linaro's daily tests.
* big.LITTLE System * Completed TC2 support. TC2 now boots with the latest IKS tree. * Added five new test cases to handle simultaneous thread switching. * Few important bugs were fixed: Switcher Thumb-2 bug, Switcher deadlock issue when working on the memblock_steal(), vlock remaining locked under certain conditions. * Team changed focus to run benchmarks with the latest IKS on TC2 to find optimization opportunities.
The release details are linked from the “Details” column for each released artifact on the release information:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1210/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 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/1210/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
-- Fathi Boudra, on behalf of the Release Team Linaro Release Manager | Validation Project Manager Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs