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I just thought I would post something here (i also listen on |
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http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ts-7000). |
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I'm putting together a .tbz2 file that can serve as a gentoo chroot for |
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embedded development for these ARM boards. It comes with crossdev too, |
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but it's necessary to NFS mount the portage tree. I'm hoping to use this |
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build environment and develop a series of overlays (one for each |
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'client' requirement). |
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Is there anyone else here that uses those boards from www.embeddedarm.com ? |
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I've used crossdev to compile applications for this ARM board in the |
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past, without failures. However, their current runtime and build |
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environment is extremely limited. The 2.4.26-tsXX kernels that they use |
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have some pretty dodgey modules that some people have been struggling to |
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get into the main 2.6.18 kernel. I have yet to successfully run a 2.6 |
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kernel on one of these boards, although other list-members have said |
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that their kernels are running quite cleanly. |
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The toolchain is binary distributed from http://seiner.com/ts7000/ . |
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It's based on gcc-3.4.4 and glibc-2.3.2. |
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I'd like to work on supporting these boards with gentoo, but I have a |
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few points that are a bit stressing: |
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1) When one wants to build a firmware image for small devices like this, |
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one usually reverts to some commercial firmware images. We don't even |
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have any support from OpenWRT yet, but hopefully soon. |
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Does Gentoo Embedded have a similar menu-driven 'Build Environment', for |
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creating firmware images like OpenWRT or PTXDist? |
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It would be extremely useful, especially because that seems to be the |
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latest with a lot of other embedded build systems. |
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2) When using the $SYSROOT / xmerge setup (which is great I should add), |
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the target filesystem still tends to occupy a HUGE amount of space, much |
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greater than the 13 or so MB that I would like to allocate to |
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non-custom-application space. |
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Is there anything in the works to create some standard byte-usage |
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minimizations scripts for the xmerge / $SYSROOT scripts? I know that the |
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FEATURES="nodoc noman" flags help, and INSTALL_MASK=".h" as well, but |
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what about masking for binary-only files? |
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Woult it even be possibly conceivable to have a client app to install |
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gentoo precompiled tbz2's ? Like a client-side package manager? |
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3) This is completely unrelated, but after checking out iPodLinux, |
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running it on my iPod, and looking at their excellent core-module |
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design, I've started writing something like PodZilla, except calling |
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it ArmZilla (and w/o the iPod UI things). I'm hoping to build modules |
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for practially anything from serial-ethernet threaded access interlacing |
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(for network clients) to writing a java/C shared memory segment to get |
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around using a lot of JNI features that might be sketchy on the ARM. |
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Anyway, just a couple of survey questions ... |
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3.i) how compatible are most applications with uClibc ? For instance |
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OpenVPN, avahi, ... and others. Will a kernel compiled w/ glibc run well |
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w/ a kernel compiled with uclibc ? |
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3.ii) Does anyone on this list have pointers on trying to get Java and C |
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to co-exist and interact on ARM boards? |
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Sorry for the long post :P |
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~/Chris |
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-- |
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