Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Restabilizing MIPS

[Stuart Longland]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 08:37:51PM -0500, Matt Turner wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Ryan Hill <dirtyepic@g.o> wrote:
> > On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 18:00:00 -0500
> > Matt Turner <mattst88@g.o> wrote:
> >
> >> Should we target package versions that aren't stabilized on other
> >> architectures yet, so that we'll have an extended testing period
> >> before they'll come up for stabilization? That is, can I plan to make
> >> gcc-4.5.1 or something the first restabilized version of gcc, go ahead
> >> and begin testing it, and be ready for stabilization when toolchain
> >> requests it?
> >
> > I'd work on getting it ~mips before you think about stabilizing. ;)  Last
> > report I got it doesn't build.
>
> I've been using gcc-4.5.1 for the last two weeks or so. :)
>
> Should I add a ~mips keyword?

I'll probably be looking at it for the next release then.  I fully
intend to do a rebuild of the o32 stages when binutils-2.21 hits
Gentoo's tree as it fixes a few MIPS issues.

> > What's your target hardware for stabilization?  Are we still focusing on SGI
> > stuff or moving on to newer platforms?
>
> SGI stuff is going to become less and less interesting, but it's still
> the most common MIPS hardware Gentoo users have [1].

One thing to factor in is the availability of parts for these systems.
As the systems break down, we can expect that market to reduce in size.

That said, there's more than just SGI systems on the big-endian side.

> STMicroelectronics MIPS systems (Lemote, Gdium, etc) are becoming more
> common, and we should definitely do a better job supporting them. (I
> should mention that I've been loaned a Yeelong by Daniel Clark, of
> freedomincluded.com, to fix up the siliconmotion driver.)

Interesting... I've found Zhang Le's overlay includes a quite workable
siliconmotion driver which runs fine on my Yeeloong.

The only catch is that one must compile it with -march=loongson2f in
CFLAGS... -mips3 (my preference) won't do.

Out of interest... did you get around to those n32 stages at all?  I'd
like to get some of my old SGI kit up and going, some of them will need
a complete reinstall... so I may as well do that using n32 from the
outset.

My O2 can remain o32 for now since it was the one still standing after
all this time.  The others, the userland is broken/stale to the point of
uselessness.

Regards,
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)      .'''.
Gentoo Linux/MIPS Cobalt and Docs Developer  '.'` :
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   .'.'
http://dev.gentoo.org/~redhatter             :.'

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.