Re: What about ARM?
> Jim Pick wrote:
> What autobuilding setup are you using? As of yesterday, I'm trying to
> set up wanna-build/buildd on rameau.debian.org (the machine Rebel.com
> set up for us)....
> It's quite complex, and completely undocumented, so it may take me a
> while to get it working right....
I looked at wanna-build a while ago and decided on a daily quinn-diff
and a couple of 3 line shell scripts. I have to intervene in such
a large percentage of the packages that a single netwinder out runs
my grey-matter anyway.
wanna-build looks good for keeping up to date once caught up and
maybe for coordinating a massive well staffed blitz-porting effort.
> Once I get rameau setup, I think we can set up additional build
> daemons. Did you ever get your maintainer application processed?
Yes, I am a maintainer.
> The tricky thing with both the NetWinder and the Acorn machines is
> that a conventional PC-style boot disk isn't going to work (the
> NetWinder doesn't have a diskette, and the Acorn machines boot RiscOS
> from ROM). So boot-floppies will need additional code and/or
> instructions.
I've come to grips with the netwinder issues, we (at FSG) install
software a couple of different ways that will make an easy debian
install.
1) From a running system grab an image and install on a new partition.
(Current debian scheme.)
2) From a clean (or about to be clean) system download a kernel+image
file from a tftp server and do a clean partition and install.
(no nfs required). Maybe set this up on a *.debian.org server?
3) From a null serial cable to a machine with a magic daemon, automatically
intercept the boot process, download a kernel+image, and install.
(Works even if you've committed an atrocity on your flash, well
except the first 64k. Also nice if you are cloning a bunch of them.)
> I'm not sure what sort of package coverage is necessary. It's
> probably up to us, I think. It's probably a requirement to have every
> binary package that we do ship up-to-date however. Obviously,
> boot-floppies is needed. I've been neglecting glibc and the
> toolchain, so that probably needs work again too.
glibc frightens me, but I built the new gcc and binutils and
everything is great, I can even build apt now. They'll go up with
my batch tonight. gdb needs more looking, its always been to large
a patch for me to send in. Maybe we can make a gdb-arm until the
mainline gdb source is close.
I'm in favor of getting the distribution officially released. I would
expect the at least one of the new Intel ARM and HP ARM to come out
before the woody release finally ambles out the door. We'll have
better chances of getting a vendor interested in Linux support if we
'have' a distribution rather than 'have been trying to finish a
distribution'. I'm hoping there will be some interesting price
performance machines with the new ARMs.
--
Jim Studt, President
The Federated Software Group, Inc.
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