"If you can dream it, you can do it." ~Walt Disney

The Linaro 13.02 release is now available!

The Linaro 13.02 release highlights the quality, effort and 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, OpenEmbedded and Ubuntu during this release cycle. The 13.02 cycle shows the reality of a dream and desire to unify, improve and build a better more effective future for Linux on ARM. Linux on ARM is not a dream, but together --Linaro, its Members, Groups, and community--continue to make the visons of Linux on ARM a reality.

The Linaro Engineering Group (LEG) released Linaro UEFI 2013.02 which fixed several bugs targeting the Arndale boards. LEG also added ARM support to libhugetlbfs, merged into next branch --package is available from Linaro's Overlay PPA.

During this release cycle the LAVA Team converted the Linaro CI jobs to lava-test-shell, a black box style testing approach, and the Galaxy Nexus device is now deployed into the LAVA lab. The Linaro Android Team has setup the AOSP master build for the Galxay Nexus.

The Linaro Developer Platform team completed the CI bring up for the Arndale board: Arndale image reports have been added to the LAVA dashboard and daily tests are run on the board. The team has also enabled UEFI support in the Arndale hardware pack. The Linux Linaro kernel 2013.02 was released and is based on the 3.8 upstream Linux kernel with highlights that include: new kvm topics and big-LITTLE-MP version master-v15. The Developer Platform Team merged the OpenEmbedded based SDK with LAMP and is able to build the FaceBook HipHop Virtual Machine v8 (64bit). In addition, the OpenEmbedded baseline has been updated to the latest gcc-linaro and linux-linaro releases. Several new packages such as acpica-unix, acpi-abat, fwts, libhugetlbfs and numactl are available from Linaro's Overlay PPA to help LEG engineering effort. Finally, the arm64 Debian/Ubuntu port image is available: http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-dev/2013-February/015534.html. A call to 'the distros' has been made to take this work forward from here. People interested in Debian and Ubuntu on 64-bit arm hardware need to step up and help out.

The Linaro Kernel team was able to update the AB8500 driver with pinctrl patches and update the Snowball platform to now use sparse IRQs. As part of the single zImage work, the team started to depopulate the Exynos and Ux500 <include/mach> and <include/plat> directories. Also as part of this, with much work from the community, final removal of <mach/id.h> subdirectory has landed in Linus's tree. The team also started to work on refactoring of the USB EHCI controller code so that we can build multiple USB host types into a single binary kernel. As part of the storage work in Kernel Working Group, work has begun on improvements to the eMMC Power Management support and the team is digging into how to use the enchanced area of eMMC devices for EXT4 journaling metadata. Additionally, as part of the team's Android upstreaming efforts, the Android keyreset driver has been accepted into the 3.9 kernel and Android alarm-dev compat_ioctl support has been added.

The Linaro Toolchain Team released Linaro GCC 4.7-2013.02-01 based off GCC 4.7.2+svn195745 and includes arm/aarch64-4.7-branch up to svn revision 195716, support for Cortex-A7 backported from trunk. The 2013.02 Linaro Toolchain Binaries release were updated to latest Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.02-01 which included upgrades for binutils to v2.23.1, eglibc to v2.17 and the kernel header to v3.7.

We encourage everybody to use the 13.02 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 * AOSP master build for Galaxy Nexus has been setup * All the platforms have been updated to 4.2.2 * Support for lava-test-shell has been added to linaro-android-build-tools.

* Developer Platform * CI bring up: ARMv7 KVM * Add Arndale hypervisor patch to u-boot-linaro * Find arndale specific patches and get them in Samsung Landing Team tree * Add linux-kvm-arm topic branch to linux-linaro * Identify which filesystem image to use for both host and guest * CI bring up: Arndale * Verify boot test in LAVA job for Arndale * Add Arndale image reports to LAVA * Verify image report dashboard for Arndale * Enable and verify UEFI support in the hwpack * Linux Linaro 3.8 2013.02 released, based off linux-linaro-core-tracking tree, llct-20130219.0 tag: * based on v3.8 release * new kvm topics (kvm-arm-v17 and kvm-arm-configs) * new armdroid-ashmem and updated armdroid-binder topics by Serban Constantinescu * updated linaro-android-3.8 topic by John Stultz * gator version 5.13 * big-LITTLE-MP version master-v15 * tb-ethernet topic for Snowball from STE Landing Team to fix the on-board ethernet * emmc patches from Kernel WG * updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT * exynos patches from Samsung LT, Arndale support included - no changes vs 13.01 * a patch to enable perf in Android by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer * vexpress64 support (both RTSM and Foundation model) * panda-fix-usb topic to make USB and on-board ethernet to work on Panda with Device Tree enabled (cherry-pick / forward port of some of the dev.omapzoom.org commits) * PandaBoard: in this release we moved from v3.4 to the recent mainline tree. Only the basic hardware is enabled. * OpenEmbedded based SDK is able to build HipHopVM * OpenEmbedded ARMv8 build has been updated * GCC updated to gcc-linaro 4.7 2013.02 release * Kernel updated to linux-linaro 2013.02 release * SDK is integrated into LAMP image * libmysqlclient_r is provided now in SDK instead of standard libmysqlclient * GDB updated to support AArch64 * arm64 Debian/Ubuntu port image available: http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-dev/2013-February/015534.html * There is now a bootable (Ubuntu Raring) image to download and run * Everything has been rebuilt against glibc 2.17 so it works * A bit more work is needed to make the rootfs useable as a native build daemon (buildd) * Multiarch cross-building and the build-profile mechanism is mature enough to cross-build a port from scratch * All packages, sources and tools are in a public repository and the work is reproducible * This image is fully multi-arched so co-installing armhf for a 64/32 mix should work nicely, as should multi-arch cross-building to x86 architectures * Several new packages available from Linaro's Overlay PPA * acpica-unix, acpi-abat, fwts, libhugetlbfs and numactl * Support LEG engineering to ramp-up on LAVA

* Infrastructure * OpenEmbedded CI builds now use persistent builders, which drastically reduces the build time.

* Kernel * AB8500 driver has been updated with pinctrl patches * Ux500 now uses sparse IRQs * Depopulate the Exynos <mach-exynos/include-mach> directory * Convert all users of gpio to pinctrl and remove gpio.h for Exynos4 * Depopulate the ux500 and plat-nomadik <mach/*> and <plat/*> * Fix <mach/id.h> regression * Final removal of <mach/id.h> landed in Torvalds' tree * Research impact on kernel size for multi-platform configs * Identify *.ko's for i.mx and VExpress for combined kernel for runtime verification * Gather static and runtime size data for combined kernel on each platform * Identify possible defconfigs for above listed platforms * Baseline the defconfig based on multi_v7_defconfig to initiate the combined kernel build for all the platforms which enables ARCH_MULTIPLATFORM support * Get the combined kernel build ready for all of the above said platforms * Get the combined kernel build excluding the above said platforms * Get the combined kernel build for the above said platforms excluding each platform at an iteration * Android keyreset driver upstreaming * Reach out to Arve to work out what critical funcitonality is still missing from work queued for 3.9 * Portions of the work merged in 3.9 as of http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=... * android upstreaming: Lowmem * Anton sent out new version of mempressure cgroup patchset, got further feedback from Glauber * Improve eMMC Power Management Support * Merge patches for fixup I/O voltage switch in protocol layer to Chris * Merge patches for adapt sdhci host driver to new sequence for how I/O voltage switch is done to Chris * Prepare patches for mmci host driver to support I/O voltage switch procedure * Refactor EHCI controller code * Propose/socialize initial ideas and patches * USB V1 and V2 version of EHCI refactor patches are submitting * Android alarm-dev compat_ioctl support * Integrate unit test into private git repo * Run unit test (manually if needed) on 32 and 64 bit build and report results here

* Power Management * Small task packing by scheduler (Power-aware scheduler) * Implement or update patches based on HMP and upstream workshop * Migrate long running task * Integration tree to bring together big.LITTLE MP related work * Create V15 branch of big LITTLE MP tree * Release V15 branch of big LITTLE MP tree * DVFS for the Common Clock Framework * consider splitting DVFS framework out from clock framework * rework dvfs/reentrancy RFC v3 * test RFC v3 * publish V3 * review OPP RCU locking scheme * test replacing RCU lock with rwlock * test replacing rwlock with atomic ops and measure performance impact * make all clk_ops reentrant * write clk torture tests * Cpufreq cleanups with a view to more consolidation and simpler drivers * Fix all cpufreq platform driver over usage of policy->cpus, policy->related_cpus and policy->shared_type * Get Ondemand & conservative governors fixed, which were changed recently by Fabio Baltieri * Port Adaptive NOHZ patchset to ARM * Study current state of ARM port * Update devfreq core * Fix devfreq stat issues * cpuidle: Tracks all miscellaneous changes to upstream cpuidle * CORE: eradicate 'driver_data' * Refactor the acpi cpuidle driver * upstream these changes * Linaro Powerdebug 0.6.2-2013.02 released * Bug:1068108 fix erroneous path and fields for the debugfs clock tree

* Toolchain * Linaro GCC 4.7-2013.02-01, based off GCC 4.7.2+svn195745 * Updates to GCC 4.7.2+svn195745 * Includes arm/aarch64-4.7-branch up to svn revision 195716 * Support for Cortex-A7 backported from trunk * Respin because of an issue with multiarch for x32 and kfreebsd builds * Linaro GCC 4.6 2013.02, based off GCC 4.6.3+svn195744 * Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.02 released, updated to latest Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.02-01 * binutils is upgraded to 2.23.1 * eglibc is upgraded to 2.17 * kernel header is upgraded to 3.7 * Backport Cortex-A7 support to -mcpu=native * Backport improvements for Cortex-A7 * Backport AArch64 patches from Cavium

* LAVA * Linaro CI jobs are converted to lava-test-shell * Galaxy Nexus device is deployed into LAVA * Calxeda and TC2-Hackbox servers are deployed in the lab * Support ARM engineering to deploy LAVA in-house * ARM Energy Probe deployed in LAVA lab * SSD Added to Calxeda server for hadoop testing

* LEG * Linaro UEFI 2013.02 released. Fixed in this release: * Bug:1116451 UEFI: arndale boot fails if build path less than 31 characters * Bug:1122930 UEFI: Update Boot Device Entry corrupts config * Bug:1123297 UEFI: arndale doesn't compile as RELEASE * Bug:1124178 UEFI: arndale does not boot with initrd * ARM support merged in libhugetlbfs next branch (package available from Linaro's Overlay PPA)

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

http://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1302/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/1302/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