Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. ~Frank Zappa

The Linaro 13.06 release is now available for download!

The 13.06 Linaro release highlights the progressive efforts 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, OpenEmbedded and Ubuntu baselines during this development cycle. With this release we celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Linaro and can truly begin to see how deviation from the norm and the "way things were" have been a catalyst to progressing the future of Linux on ARM thus bringing the collaborative efforts of Linaro, its members and the greater Open Source Community together to build upon.

It’s been a very active cycle for the Builds and Baselines team, reporting that the Continuous Integration (CI) loop for the Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) Android proof of concept which is based on 3.9.6 kernel version was set up and includes the big.LITTLE IKS and MP patches (also called beta patchset). Support for Kernel CI loop with Android filesystem was added to android-build and CI loop was set up to track the ARM Landing Team (LT) integration tree. The HiSilicon member build with complete CI loop was set up and now tracks the LT kernel tree.

The LAVA team was equally as productive as LAVA support for tarballs (tgz), Debian and RPM packaging has been reviewed and explicit support has now been created outside the use of lava-deployment-tool. Additionally, LAVA now supports KVM devices, which can be used for providing x86 boxes for cross-building and other tasks where there is no need (or no possibility) of using actual ARM devices.

Progress on the kernel front includes the continuous porting effort to multi-platform support as well as Integrator PCI DT, the u300 work and the Nomadik clock DT were pulled into ARM SoC tree. The team also posted the first version of the ARM 32 bit uprobes support for public review and has got portions of eMMC power management work accepted upstream.

The QA Services team, in collaboration with the Power Management WG, have fully automated big.LITTLE benchmarking noting that when a build is done, it is automatically benchmarked and results are uploaded to a google spreadsheet. The initial cleanup of bugs in Linaro launchpad projects has now been completed and the Piglit test suite is now run on each Android build for PandaBoard.

We encourage everybody to use the 13.06 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:

== LAVA ==

* LAVA Core * As part of the effort to improve the developer experience with LAVA, the different client tools were consolidated into a single package, which simplifies the process of updating the tools and makes it easier for the team to provide new features for LAVA users. * LAVA now supports KVM devices, which can be used for providing x86 boxes for cross-building and other tasks where there is no need (or no possibility) or using actual ARM devices. * Linaro LAVA users can now submit LAVA jobs targeting Calxeda EnergyCore nodes. The devices are available under the "highbank" device type. * 5 Arndale Boards now available in LAVA! * Nexus 10 support has been added. * UEFI booting supported on b.L fastmodels. * Huawei k3v2 support has been added. * Broadcom Capri support has been added. * Interactive boot commands supported on UEFI fastmodels. * Image reports modified to add the ability to chart and visualize filter results * LAVA Infrastructure * All Fastmodel server upgrades now controlled by Salt * releases.linaro.org and snapshots.linaro.org authenticate against Linaro OpenID/crowd. * Lab Xen Virtual machines now backed up to NAS. * LAVA Lab now monitored 24/7 with Nagios. * LAVA production server upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

== Builds and Baselines ==

* CI loop for LSK Android proof of concept kernel based on 3.9.6 kernel version has been setup that includes the b.L IKS and MP patches. * Support for CI loop for kernel with Android filesystem has been added to android-build. CI loop has been setup to track the ARM LT integration tree. * HiSilicon member build with complete CI loop has been setup and tracks the LT kernel tree. * Critical Issues Fixed * LP#1183781 Enabling IKS after boot crashes Android * LP#1189357 android builds failing due to gcc 4.8 failing to compile ffmpeg * LP#1192548 boot test fail with Linaro-android jellybean snowball builds * LNG kernel tress has been set up. It's based on 3.8.13 with PREEMPT_RT patchset and Arndale enablement * Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.05 released. It includes: * Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.06 * Linaro Newlib 2.0 2013.06 * Linaro Binutils 2.23 2013.06 * Linaro Eglibc 2.17-2013.06 (Aarch64 only) * Linux Linaro 3.10-rc6 2013.06 released * based on linux-linaro-core-tracking tree, llct-20130618.0 tag: * based on v3.10-rc6 * gator version 5.15 (new version vs 13.05 release) * updated linaro-android-3.10 topic by John Stultz * binder topic reduced to single binder 64 bit patch, the rest got accepted into the mainline * numa/huge pages topics (same version as in 13.05 release) * big-LITTLE-MP-master-v17 (same version as in 13.05 release) * interactive-gov-updates topic from Viresh Kumar (rebased version of the 13.05 topic) * updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT * updated arndale/exynos patches from Samsung LT * a patch to enable perf in Android by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer (same as in 13.05) * vexpress64 support (both RTSM and Foundation model) * new omap-fixes-13.06 topic: USB host and the on-board ethernet are operational on PandaBoard again * config fragments changes: * linaro-base.conf: CONFIG_NFS_V2 disabled, * distribution.conf: CONFIG_BRIDGE, CONFIG_BRIDGE_NETFILTER and CONFIG_BRIDGE_NF_EBTABLES added for libvirt, * kvm-host.conf: cleaned up not to duplicate linaro-base.conf * omap4.conf: updated to account for USB changes in the mainstream kernel * Linaro Stable Kernel (preview) 3.9.6 2013.06 released * based on 3.9.6 stable tree * generic vexpress TC2 support from ARM LT (no big.LITTLE MP, IKS, and arm64) * MCPM patches for TC2 * big-LITTLE-MP-master-v16 (same version as in linux-linaro 13.04 release) * generic IKS support from Nicolas Pitre * IKS TC2 patches (the TC2 patches missing from the generic IKS topic were cherry-picked from the linaro-private.git.linaro.org/bL_switcher/linux.git, v3.9-master branch; v3.9-master branch is based on ARM LT's integration-android-vexpress when it was based on v3.9) * core config fragments from linux-linaro 13.04 (linaro-base.conf, ubuntu-minimal.conf, big-LITTLE-MP.conf) * perf tools: fix to make perf to build in 3.9 kernel * builddeb tweaks to enable kernel cross build with deb-pkg, and to ensure that the DT blob is built and packed properly into the kernel image package. * android for v3.9 plus Linaro fixes * Linaro OpenEmbedded baseline updates: * Switched to repo for clone(s) * GCC updated to Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.06 release and also the default * Kernel updated to linux-linaro 2013.06 release * icedtea bumped to version 03b21-2.1.8 * External toolchain supported; see init-and-build.sh -h * xvfb added to LAMP image * LNG image added, based on YOCTO * LEG JAVA image added

== Graphics ==

* xf86-video-armsoc extended for ST-Ericsson drm driver (Nova)

== Kernel ==

* Port some of the simpler platforms to multiplatform support * Integrator PCI DT pulled into ARM SoC tree * u300 work pulled into the ARM SoC tree * Nomadik clock DT pulled into ARM SoC tree * Implement and upstream ARM 32 bit uprobes support * Design and implement vector table for parser output actions * Recreate patch set for public review * Get QEMU enviroment set up and working * Uplevel work to v3.10-rc3 * Refactor OHCI controller code * Create base patch for OHCI to allow loading backends as modules * factor out OMAP, OMAP3, at91, SPEAr and s3c2410 backends * Improve eMMC Power Management Support * Prepare patches for reworking suspend to be more integrated in the protocol layer * Prepare patches for adapt shutdown to use similar cmds as for suspend in the protocol layer * Storage EXT4 journal in enhanced area of eMMC * Experiment with mkfs to put inode metadata in single block group * Experiment with mkfs to put all metadata in front (single block group) * Upstream "power: Add option to log time spent in suspend" patch from AOSP * Get fix patch merged into 3.10 * Get debug patch queued in -tip for 3.11 * Android upstreaming: Ashmem * Further discussion and rework of patches * First pass unifying purging logic for file and anon pages * Resent to LKML for feedback * Migrate Android Alarmtimer driver over to using the upstreamed Alarmtimers * Todd's patches were queued for 3.11 in -tip

== Power Management ==

* Full automation of b.L benchmarking * The kernel is pulled into a build * When the build is done, it is automatically benchmarked * Results are uploaded automatically to a google spreadsheet * cpu hotplug latency test should be integrated on to scheduler test suite to run on LAVA * Linaro PM QA 0.4.2 2013.06 release - bug fix * fixes for Android lava failure

== QA ==

* Successfully completed 13.06 release testing on Android, Ubuntu and OpenEmbedded builds. Test results and bug reports have been shared. * Initial cleanup of bugs in Linaro launchpad projects was completed. * Piglit test suite is now run on each Android build for Pandaboard

== Toolchain ==

* Linaro QEMU 1.5.0 2013.06 released, based off upstream (trunk) QEMU 1.5.0 * fixes to the VersatilePB and Realview model PCI controller. * improved performance of emulation of ARM targets. * working VM save/load for vexpress-a15 and vexpress-a9 board models. * Linaro eglibc 2.17 2013.06 released * faster memcpy implementation for hardware with NEON or VFP support. * Linaro newlib 2.0.0 2013.06 released * Faster memcpy implementation for hardware with NEON or VFP support. * Linaro binutils 2.23.2 2013.06 released * Bug fix for ARM support of GNU indirect functions. * Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.06 released, based off the latest GCC 4.8.0+svn200019 release. * Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.06 released, based off the latest GCC 4.7.3+bzr115076 release.

== LEG ==

* Linaro UEFI 2013.06 released, is based on the following upstream versions of code from Tianocore: * edk2 at subversion revision 14395 * edk2-fatdriver2 at subversion revision 73 * edk2-buildtools at subversion revision 2582 * HugeTLB and THP support for v8 have been pulled into linux-next

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

http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1306/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/1306/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 Builds and Baselines Manager | Release Manager Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs