[Server-devel] ARM on XS -- how can I integrate my work?

[Peter Robinson]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2012 at 6:11 AM, rihoward1 at gmail.com
<rihoward1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 25, 2012, at 8:27 AM, Daniel Drake wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 8:14 AM, George Hunt <georgejhunt at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not done yet, but I've been making progress on porting XS code to ARM by
>>> making modifications to DSD's  XS-0.7.  Upon his suggestion, I have been
>>> basing my work on the srpms posted at
>>> http://xs-dev.laptop.org/xsrepos/stable/olpc/xs-0.7/source/.
>>>
>>> Now that I've got some of the services running, I'm wondering how to
>>> contribute to the XS codebase.  What I'd prefer is to contribute deltas from
>>> XS-0.7 that use `uname -p` to enable the appropriate path through the
>>> startup scripts.
>>
>> That kind of approach would suggest supporting both CentOS and F17+.
>> I'm not sure if thats the direction we'd want to go - supporting 2
>> platforms has its costs. It might be preferred to do a full migration
>> to F17. You'll need clarification from this from Martin, who's away
>> until next month.
>
> There is no CentOS for ARM.  It is not even on the horizon yet. On the other
> hand rpmfusion has recently expressed interest in building for the 2 ARM
> archs supported by Fedora.

There's no CentOS for ARM because there is no EL for ARM, there's is a
project attempting to achieve a EL6 clone but IMO it's a waste of time
as it can only support armv5tel because the compiler and tool chain in
EL6 doesn't even know hardfp exists.

rpmfusion was planning on adding ARM support when they move to koji
from their previous (current?) build platform. Not sure of the current
status of that.

> I have been targeting F17 for ARM with an eye to F18 for ARM which may
> make the cut to become a primary architecture.

It's unlikely at this point in time that ARM will become primary arch
in the F-18 timeframe simply due to one of the big blockers is decent
build hardware and while it should be available "soon" it's not going
to be enough time to deal with that. At this point in time F-19 is
much more likely.

Ultimately any packages or changes needed for XS whether it's aimed at
CentOS/EPEL or Fedora whether it be on x86 or ARM should aim to
getting the changes into mainline Fedora which means if it's in
mainline it will be build on ARM whether ARM is primary or secondary
arch. It generally makes the maintenance of the packages easier and
more straight forward especially if it's a change/enhancement to
existing packages as the changes evolve when the main package evolves.

Peter