Hi,
The Linaro Team is pleased to announce the release of Linaro 11.07.
11.07 is the Linaro’s second release delivered on the new monthly cadence.
This release includes components from all Working Groups and Landing Teams as
well as set of Android and Ubuntu based images that come with integrated Linaro
updates to provide a fastpath to Linaro technology. The 11.07 Linaro release
moved all main kernel efforts to Linux 3.0. It features a 3.0 linux-linaro,
linux-linaro-android kernel and comes with Linaro Evaluation Builds (LEBs) of
Ubuntu and Android based on linux-linaro-3.0 TI Landing Team's kernel.
Additionaly, 11.07 saw the Linaro Android move to gcc-linaro 4.6 as the default
compiler; this means that all main Linaro efforts are now focussed on the GCC
4.6 series as their baseline.
We encourage everybody to use the 11.07 release. The download links for all
images and components are available on our release page:
http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1107/Release
Highlights of this release:
* Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB) for Android on PandaBoard is built on Linux
3.0 kernel with gcc-linaro 4.6 as the default compiler which is used for all
official Linaro Android Platform builds. This Linaro Android monthly release
exhibits the first official Linaro Android Toolchain release based on the
most recent gcc-linaro 4.6, and the first Linaro Android release for
ST Ericsson Snowball using Landing Team kernel based on linux-linaro-android.
On top, Linaro Android 11.07 comes with the more advanced more visually
appealing Launcher2 by default.
* Android GCC benchmark results for 11.07 release can be found on
http://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/AndroidToolchainBenchmarking/2011-07
* Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB) for Ubuntu also uses the most recent
linux-linaro kernel based on Linux 3.0 and includes the latest Linaro Cross
Toolchain available for Ubuntu Lucid and Natty. ARM DS-5 packages are now
available and enabled by default for the developer image. They are packaged
and can be easily installed on Ubuntu host and target by simply enabling a
"linaro" hosted PPA. The Developer Platform Team continued to improve the
developer experience for Ubuntu and Linux based ARM by adding support for
cross buildable images to Live-build 3 which makes it easier to produce
Ubuntu images in a cross build environment. Additional highlights for our
Ubuntu efforts include working hwpacks for all Landing Team low cost boards
- a first, libjpeg-turbo integrated and set as the default for Ubuntu/LEB
images, and packages delivered by the Graphics Working Group like
glcompbench, glmark2 and unity.
* Linaro kernel current release is based on the 3.0 stable kernel with a
number of changes developed by Linaro and integrated from the 3.1-rc cycle.
In addition to the changes already in 3.0, this release of the Linaro kernel
includes: the comprehensive ARM kprobes work which extend kprobes to support
Thumb-2 kernels, the new processor struct macros, the ARM cpu topology
definition, basic Cortex A15 support, DMA infrastructure cleanups, a kernel
helper to perform 64-bit atomic operations and multiple enhancements for DT
support.
* Initial release of Linaro-Android Common tree based on Linaro-kernel 3.0
with addition of ADB functionality to linaro-android tree for OMAP3.
* U-boot provides an incremental release with multiple improvements: a better
PXE support based on feedback from the Ubuntu ARM server team, generated
unique ethernet address based on SOC die id on OMAP4, ability to customize
boot command via boot.scr script file or uEnv.txt plain text file, new
fdt_high environment variable as part of a fix to allow using all 1G of
memory on PandaBoard.
* Power Management Team enabled sched_mc for ARM, added topology detection for
ARM thus allowing scheduler to be tweaked to save power.
* From the Graphics Working Group, this release adds support for OpenGL ES and
EGL in GLEW library for ARM Linux, glewinfo and visualinfo utilities support
for OpenGL ES, new versions of compiz and plugins-main with updates to the
0.9.5.2 upstream branches, and multiple enhancements to the glmark2 and
glcompbench benchmarks for OpenGL ES 2.0.
* Toolchain Working Group has released Linaro GCC 4.6 and 4.5. The 4.6 series
has new optimisations including improved vectoriser support for shifts,
widening multiplies, and peeling; improvements to the swing-modulo scheduler;
and fixes multiple bugs found in the last month.
* With 11.07 release, the Infrastructure Team have improved creation, testing
and usage of the Linaro images. Linaro-fetch-image-ui is a wizard style
graphical tool that guides the user through the process of creating a fully
functional operating system for Linaro supported hardware, along with a
command line that does the same. Pre-built images will be available, the
ground work has finished that will allow the production of pre-built images
that can simply be copied to a SD card and run without the need to learn
about Linaro tools when just trying out a standard image.
* This month LAVA main changes is the UI for the dashboard got an overhaul
with new features added. Basic UI is added to the sheduler to see the status
of boards and jobs. The ability to schedule jobs by device type is also
added to the scheduler. The dispatcher has better error handling and
preliminary support for Snowball boards and lava-test now streams results
while the test is running.
* Office of the CTO (OCTO) has produced its first ARM hard-float images (alpha
stage). More information on the usage and the work related to those images
can be found on https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linaro/+spec/engr-octo-armhf-images
* And much more... The release details are linked from the "Details" column
for each release artifact on the 11.07 release page.
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/1107/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
Regards,
--
Mounir Bsaibes
Project Manager
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