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Hi! |
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So where are we at with alpha currently? |
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Xorg-1.5 |
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-------- |
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As some of you know, xorg-1.5 abandoned the "classic" way of |
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interfacing with PCI and AGP cards in favor of using |
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libpciaccess. That, in turn expects support from the kernel in |
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the form of /sys/devices/<bus>/<id>/<func>/resourceN files. |
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Unfortunately, alpha until recently hat no support for those PCI |
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resources (which is partly due to the way alpha IO space is |
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structured and partly due to a crucial extension not being |
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available on old Alphas (older than EV5). |
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As such, we weren't able to keyword or stabilize Xorg-1.5 until |
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recently, when 2.6.30-rc* saw support finally being added. |
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Naturally, packages depending on >=xorg-1.5 had to be held off, |
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too. |
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|
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The -rc kernels are keyworded ~alpha so people can test. So far, |
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-rc3 and rc4 are looking good, so we will keyword xorg and deps |
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soon (I'm aiming for this weekend) and if all goes well, we will |
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have it stable, soon. |
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Note that this will mean that people with EV4-Alphas will *not* |
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be able to use Xorg-1.5 just now. I feel that those machines are |
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so slow that very few will run X11 anyway, if there are Gentoo |
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installations on those to start with. |
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Glibc/Toolchain |
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--------------- |
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Glibc has had a bug for ages (regarding ceil() and friends, bug |
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number 264335) which should really be fixed. Upstream is umm.. |
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their usual selves about it. On top, a patch for fdatasync() (bug |
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264336) is available which upstream... well, you get it. |
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Workload |
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-------- |
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|
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Currently, the alpha arch team consists of me (the nominal lead) |
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and armin76 who helps a lot with getting stable request answered |
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in a timely manner. |
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|
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Also, we're in the process of recruiting mattst88 as an arch |
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tester. He's currently deep in exam-land at university, so the |
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process is on hold for now. |
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|
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Users/Community |
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--------------- |
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|
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Aside from those on the team and one or two other devs, I've had |
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little to no direct feedback from Gentoo alpha users. I try to |
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write about Alpha regularly on my blog (available on the planet) |
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and I'm easily reachable as Blackb|rd on Freenode (#gentoo-alpha, |
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naturally). |
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|
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I've been toying with the idea of offering something akin to |
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Debians popularity contest tool. Some people are rather |
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uncomfortable with data gathering tools that send stuff to some |
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strangers, so I don't know how well it would work. I list this |
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idea here, since I have just about no idea what actual alpha |
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hardware is used with Gentoo out there. Knowing which packages |
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are actually *used* (instead of just being stabilized for the |
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heck of it) would be nice. Added benefit of that would be that |
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users helping with testing would reduce workload. |
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In essence: we're busy and I'd love to get more feedback what |
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people (both users and devs) think we could do better, or |
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more/less of. |
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Regards, |
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Tobias, |
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who turned 42 in octal today |
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|
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-- |
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The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes, |
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trouble shoots back. |
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