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

[Fernando Monera]

Hi,
I see dropping ARM support is good for Gentoo in general due to lack of 
maintainers. GFZ is only a colateral damage ;-)

That said, let's think what we should do now. 

First question that comes to my mind: Due to the many different ARM 
architectures out there, and the peculiarities of a zaurus (128Mb HD and 64 
MB RAM, "special" install procedure, etc.), we will possibly not be valid ARM 
supporters, some packages could be validated by us and then be invalid for 
other ARM users. Should we create a ZAURUS architecture instead ARM?

Fernando


On Thursday 25 March 2004 10:00, Kumba wrote:
> Akos Maroy wrote:
> > we already have portage working, with an old snapshot of the portage
> > tree (arm keywords still included). see
> > http://gentooforzaurus.opensistemas.com/
> >
> > the idea at the moment is to mount gentoo-related files through nfs, as
> > it is quite large, and does not fit on most memory cards for the Zaurus.
>
> I don't doubt this.  The smallest drive I managed to kludge gentoo on
> was 1GB, and that required NFS mounting, and waiting about 5 days for
> gcc to build over nfs (was a sparcstation 20).
>
> > by this you mean we shouldn't bother trying to create stage1?
>
> Stage1's need a seed stage, essentially a stage2 at minimum.  I had to
> use a live gentoo filesystem on my Cobalt RaQ2 to kickstart stage
> building for the systems (they're mips little endian, at the time, only
> big endian was supported).  Once you can achieve a stage2, then you can
> work on both stage3 and stage1.  I basically tar'ed up my existing
> stage2 on the cobalt at the time (installed over top a debian
> installation), and used that as a seed stage for stage1 with catalyst
> (was a ~100MB+ seed stage vs. ~40MB for stage2's), built a stage1 off
> that, and then repeated twice more just to make sure I had a pure stage
> with no debian in it  (Took a week).
>
> > a lame question here: naturally there would be more poeple working on
> > this, thus this separate portage tree has to be accessed / written by
> > several people. how would we achieve this? put it in a CVS somewhere,
> > and use cvs commit / update? or somehow utilize emerge sync?
>
> For this project, and since you already have people working on it, I'd
> recommend CVS, or some kind of source code control system.  It'll make
> things easier.
>
> > I see, catalyst is the name of the game here :)
>
> Catalyst is the key for easier gentoo stage building.  I always
> considered the old 'stager' utility nothing more than a glorified bash
> script, but catalyst is a real tool, and is rather effective at what it
> does.
>
> > when we get there, we'll have to have special precautions for embedded
> > systems. for example for the Zaurus, you have to flash the new operating
> > system in, including the kernel and the base filesystem, via a manual
> > procedure.
> >
> > but hey, it's still some way when we have to address this issue :)
>
> It's never an easy trip, porting to a new arch is typically only done by
> one person, then others get interested.  tuxus started the mips port
> that way, tgall_foo is working on ppc64, GMSoft more or less ran the
> hppa port all by himself for a time before some other people got hppa
> boxes, iggy is working on an s390 port (unsure how many people are using
> it), and the original arm port was started by zwelch by himself (he was
> the one who forked Gentoo into Zynot btw).  So in reality, if you've
> already got a small team together, you're better off from the start than
> some of the other ports.
>
> These precautions you speak of will need to be documented too.  One of
> the people working on the Zaurus stuff may want to maintain a
> guidexml-based installation guide.  Should arm get re-incorporated into
> gentoo sometime down the road, this will be a required piece, especially
> to get it integrated into the Gentoo Handbook.
>
>
> --Kumba

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Fernando Monera Daroqui

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