Re: [gentoo-embedded] is Gentoo ARM really defunct?

[Kumba]

Akos Maroy wrote:

> Looking at this forum topic:
>
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=984903#984903
>
> it seems that gentoo ARM is an abandoned project by now. Is this true?

I wouldn't call it abandoned, just taking a really long vacation.  Since 
  most of the arm devs left when Zynot forked, there's just not been 
enough people around willing to devote the necessary time to test 
packages from the tree to determine what works on arm and what doesn't.

Essentially, to re-kickstart arm, several people need to work on a 
single platform, and I know ARM is one of those really weird archs out 
there with 200+ subdivisions.  So say, take the Zaurus as a starting 
point.  Everyone with a Zaurus can work out in a place (say these MLs 
for example, or the forums) and determine which packages work or don't 
work, maintain a local portage tree, and feed major patches back to us 
(like patches for glibc, gcc, and other *base-system* packages).  Once a 
minimal gentoo system on ARM can be built for a portage tree, I would 
imagine that would go a long way to getting arm support readded to the 
tree.  As I stated in that forum thread, a majority of arm keywords were 
removed because they were getting in the way of repoman's dependency 
checker, and no one was officially maintaining them (thus stagnation).

Not an easy task, but doable.  As for Zynot, I'm honestly not sure what 
is going on with them, and whether or not they're truly defunct, or just 
laying low for awhile.  The former is assumed based on the level of 
activity, but the latter is not entirely ruled out of the equation just yet.


--Kumba

-- 
"Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: 
small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are 
elsewhere."  --Elrond

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