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Re: Debian non-x86 kernel arches



On Sat, May 22, 2004 at 01:22:16PM -0500, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
> (Sorry I could't correctly reply, I just subscribed)
> 
> Jens Schmalzing <j.s@lmu.de> wrote:
> 
> >> and with that I mean the existing maintainers should cooperate.
> 
> >Indeed.  But cooperation already exists.  So far, it meant that
> >Herbert took the upstream source, prepared a kernel-source package,
> >and put it up on people.d.o for the other maintainers to download and
> >prepare their arch-specific kernel-image packages.  Very efficient.  I
> >don't think we could come even close to this if we had one source
> >package for all kernel-image packages.
> 
> It may be efficient for maintainers, but it leads to non-x86 arches
> being second-class citizens if everyone has to wait for the x86
> maintainer to prepare arch-specific kernels. The result is I just go
> download source and build for all my PPC debian machines. I'd really
> rather get a debian package. But if ppc has to wait for x86, it just
> gets to take too long.

Notice that usually you got per arch kernels at the same time as the x86
one, since we porters get the kernel package from Herbert at mostly the
same time Herbert uploads them, if not earlier, and they will sit in the
NEW queue almost the same time.

> I'd like to propose we attempt to build x86, amd64, ppc, and ia64
> kernels from the same source tree. Arches like mips and m68k will
> probably still need extra patches. But we should really be working to
> mainline those patches.

Well, it is a nice tentative, but ppc needs still the pegasos patches,
as well as the apus ones, and it is a nice possibility to be able to add
stuff without really worrying about breaking stuff on non ppc arches.
Usually the right way to have things integrated upstream is through the
upstream linuppc kernels folk.

> Note I did not include PPC64 in this list yet... I think we are gated on
> that until we have something equivalent to what amd64 has on alioth.

Well, we need gcc-3.4 with biarch support and a glibc that supports
ppc64. Once that is done, it should be almost trivial to build a ppc64
kernel (or more than one, i would go for pseries/power3,
pseries/power4/ppc970, and iseries kernels). I hear they need something
like three userland packages to be built for work though.

Friendly,

Sven Luther



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