Re: OLPC and embedded debian
On 2007-03-26 11:00 -0400, Richard Smith wrote:
> Wookey wrote:
>
> >>I get one board and we are 5 or 6 people in this case.
> >>So I was thinking to use embedded debian list and repo for this project.
> >>
> >>what do you think ?
> >
> >I think it's a good idea. The OLPC is a nice 'small system' (not
> >really an embedded system).
>
> I'm curious for your reasoning behind this thinking. I feel like the XO
> is more like an embedded system than a normal PC.
> Whats your criteria for the hardware that makes up an embedded system?
Well, it's a sliding scale, and exactly what people mean by 'embedded'
depends on their background. It used to mean 'less than 128K in the
whole damn system', but has expanded to cover prety hefty hardware.
My distinction is that small systems have enough storage to run
'standard debian' which means 'at least 128Mb', preferably 512.
Embedded systems require carefully stripped-down rootfs so it fits in
say <16MB.
This is fairly arbitrary but there are real differences in how you
work (building things) if you can use 'more of less normal debian
(like on en NSLU2)' or need something a lot smaller than that (like on
an early ipaq or in a router).
> >Your life is somewhat simplified because your build and target arches
> >are probably the same. Testing the tools on native builds is not
> >something that has happened yet (SFAIK). Tell us how it goes...
>
> If you compile for say i[345]86 then yes this is true but we have both
> gcc and libc performance optimizations that are specific to the geode
> and require cross-compile.
OK. So that means you are not using a native debian arch anymore.
There is current debate within emdebian about how much to support
things beyond the standard arches, and if so, how (more arches, ABI
control file options, specific libc6-geode packages etc).
> Although its possible to do native
> development on the XO its not something we recommend. At least not on a
> B1 or a B2. B3 with the faster LX and 256MiB of ram may make that more
> of an option.
I was assuming you'd build things on a differnet (much faster) i386
box. So it was native, but not actually building on the target
hardware.
Wookey
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http://wookware.org/
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