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

[rihoward1 at gmail.com]

On Jun 28, 2012, at 8:21 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:

> 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.
That has been my goal...to promote that idea.  One question is should olpc-bios
be upstreamed? I am investigating a different approach to what has been taken
ejabbered in the past with regard to patching and building a completely different 
one for the XS to provide needed behavior.  It involves learning a "little" erlang.

> 
> Peter