Hi LAVA folks,
I don't know if you guys know, but Android is moving to LLVM for the next release or so. As such, we'll need to do a lot of testing between now and next release to make sure each component can be compiled (and runs correctly) with LLVM on an incremental basis.
We're trying to come up with a way for remotely testing the Linux kernel booting on ARM devices, more specifically an Android stack, and I'm finding it hard to do that with my home equipment. Doing that in LAVA would be ideal, and I know the Android team does it already, but our constraints could be a little different.
Basically, there are two fronts:
1. Building Android components with LLVM, using a GCC-compiled kernel booting on an ARM board, in LAVA. This is something we should work internally on how to do it, and it'll be between Android, LAVA and Toolchain groups.
2. Building the Linux kernel with LLVM, and using a GCC-compiled image (like stock CyanogenMod) to test the kernel. We don't have such a kernel (many patches), but the LLVMLinux guys do, and that's where they come in.
On the second case, the topic of this email, we'd have to liaise with them to fire jobs at LAVA from their own infrastructure (originally, manually only), and that might need some thinking. But ultimatelly, we want to have those jobs running on LAVA, so that later on we'd be able to have a third layer: Linux+Android built with LLVM with the same system level tests.
Since the LLVMLinux guys don't have access to much ARM hardware, and since it's easier for us to scale (or to re-define) hardware requirements, having them running on LAVA makes even more sense.
Is this something we can do? Is this being done already? Is this just a question of legal/corporate decision, or is there any technical issues we have to look into?
Android folks,
It might make more sense if you guys just grab their kernel and build the Android system based on that internally, so that we don't need external access to job submissions in LAVA, but that would mean work from you guys to patch it up, and that might not be in the roadmap for the next months. Is that a feasible route?
cheers, --renato