Re: [gentoo-mips] Reducing the number of the MIPS supported stages

[Markos Chandras]

On 05/06/2014 10:37 PM, Joshua Kinard wrote:
>
>> And you haven't really convinced me why mips4 is desired, when mips3 can
>> run just fine on mips4 hardware. I think you need to be realist, and
>> take into consideration, not just your personal needs, but also the time
>> it actually takes to build and maintain all these stages. I explained
>> that so many times already, I am not going to do that again.
>> As Anthony said, mipsel3 is used by lemote, so keeping it alive is
>> probably a good thing (though the newer hardware is mips64 capable)
>
> Well, to me, mips3 != mipsel3.  Sorry about that.  When I say mips3/mips4
> (lowercase), I usually refer to big-endian.  If I capitalize the ISA, i.e.,
> MIPS-III or MIPS-IV, then I'm referring to the entire ISA, regardless of
> endianness.
>
> So, to re-clarify my original statement, for big-endian SGI systems, we
> probably only need mips4 and I guess the mips4_r10 stages.  I don't know if
> any of our users still have or run R4x00 mips3 big-endian equipment.  If so,
> well, I can do that too, then.  It's just a higher electric bill :)

Dropping mips4 and building mips3 (yes BE) should satisfy everyone even
if they don't get the maximum optimizations right after the stage3
unpacking. But if you want to do all 3 of them, I will not stop you :)

>
> And it's not really my personal preference.  Based on my understanding of
> what we currently support, that's what makes sense to me.  I know you work
> on MIPS stuff for your day job, but it's a hobby for me, so I have to
> prioritize things a bit differently.  That said, I've done catalyst runs
> before, so I know how time-consuming they can be, especially if the build
> breaks somewhere in the middle of a long compile.

I am not getting paid to do Gentoo/MIPS (not sure when I said the
opposite) so it's still a hobby for me that's why I want to do other
things as well. We can all agree that being an arch team member is not
just about building stages.

>
> I think what we need to do is instead of having just one person like you or
> Matt do all of the stage building, separate out the ISAs/ABIs/etc to the
> people that actually care most about it.  Anthony works with the mipsel3
> Lemote hardware, so if he wants, he can take care of mipsel3 stages; I'll
> handle the SGI stuff since I know a lot about those machines; and you can
> cover whichever of the newer ISAs matter most to you.
>
> Sound reasonable?  We can even work out a set timetable for stage building,
> or just release individual stages on an as-needed basis.

Works perfectly fine for me. I think each one building his stages on his
own timescale is better.

>
>
>>> Otherwise, just e-mail me your mips3/mips4/mips4_r10 spec files, any custom
>>> tweaks/changes to catalyst, and any specific instructions you do
>>> before/during/after a catalyst build and I'll put the O2 to work if needed.
>>>
>>
>> There is nothing special about my spec files and I do nothing special in
>> catalyst so feel free to pick up the mips3 and mips4 stages. If you are
>> having troubles with catalyst email the gentoo-catalyst@ ML. That might
>> actually be a good way for you to become active again ;)
>
> Back in the past, I had to tweak catalyst sometimes to get it to do stage
> builds properly.  A lot of those bugs have probably been fixed by now, at
> least for stage1-3.

There are usually blockers and stuff due to MIPS being ~arch but
catalyst, as a tool, works fine.

The livecd stages and netboots, however, were much more
> problematic.

I don't think we do that anymore

>
> If you can still send me at least one of your stage3 spec files, that'd be
> appreciated.  It's been 5-6 years since I last messed with catalyst.  The
> Octane was my build platform, but combined with the bitrot that prevented it
> from booting, moving, a new job, etc, I never got around to setting up stage
> building on the O2.  Now that I can boot Octane again, I can at least
> recover my old spec files, though.  Might help if I ever attempt to tackle
> the livecd or netboot builds again.

I will email you a complete set of stage1/2/3 for, say, mips3 and then
it's easy to figure out what do change for the rest :)


-- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras