ep93xx, ts72xx, gesbc-9302 and more (was Re: Angstrom, ep93xx, broken rootfs)

[Christian Gagneraud <cgagneraud@techworks.ie>]

[this is a not so short email about EP-93xx CPU, EP-93xx based 
machine, and a request to have them officially supported by OE/Angstrom]

Alex Williams wrote:
> Hello!
> I decided to update my OpenEmbedded from git today. Result: broken
> rootfs, many applications lost such as busybox and many other files,
> symlinks. Tried to build minimal-image... One week before update I had
> perfect rootfs and everything work fine... Resetting many commits
> since last week did not helped me.
> Details here: http://pastebin.com/m7ddd3941

I'm just curious, which board do you use?

I would like to highlight an "issue" to oe developpers: The machine 
name "ep93xx" is completely misleading, because it refers to a CPU 
name not a board/machine name, the conf/machine/ep93xx.conf file says 
that this is for the "Cirrus Logic EP-93xx Development Platform", 
which is the vendor development board for the EP-93xx CPU, so the name 
should be something like "ep93xxevb" or "devkit-ep93xx", or whatever 
saying it refers to a dev board not to all EP-93xx based machine.

As well, there is a conf/machine/include/tune-ep9312.inc which is not 
used by any machine conf file, does anyone know why?
That's  a pity because this serie of CPU (EP93xx) has FP support 
support through maverick crunch. Which is supported by linux and gcc4, 
and this is exactly the purpose of this tune-ep9312.inc file (i did 
not test it yet, see below).

By greping "ep93" in conf/machine and packages/linux, it comes:
Known machine that use the EP-93xx CPU:
- ep93xx (the Cirrus Logic dev board)
- ts72xx (Technologic systems board)
- gesbc-9302 (
Kernel declared as EP93xx compatible (via COMPATIBLE_MACHINE = "ep93xx"):
- ep93xx-kernel_2.6.17+2.6.18-rc1.bb
- ep93xx-kernel_2.6.19+2.6.20-rc7.bb
Kernel compatible with EP93xx (via patch whose name contains "ep93"):
- linux_2.6.22+2.6.23-rc5
- linux_2.6.22.6.bb
- linux_2.6.24.bb

I'm currently working with a TS-7260 and a TS-7800 boards. I would 
like to contribute to oe:
- add machine conf file for ts7800 (based on marvell orion CPU)
- add a kernel "linux-ts" (vendor provided kernel, currently 
linux-ts-2.6.21 which support both ts72xx series and ts78xx series)
- add the latest kernel patch published on the ts7xxx mailing list, 
which bring support for kernel 2.6.28 on ts72xx boards, i was told 
that the this vanilla kernel fully support the ts7800 board, still 
need to test
- add the possibility to the user to select which kernel to use in 
local.conf, by changing the ts72xx.conf file with something like this:
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel ?= "linux"
PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-ts        ?= "2.6.21"
PREFERRED_VERSION_linux           ?= "2.6.28"

With the above modification, I am currently able to build rootfs and 
boot into it with both kernels (linux-ts-2.6.21 and linux-2.6.28), and 
with both angstrom stable (2007.1) and dev (2009.X) branches

Later on, i would like to experiment with maverick crunch, to check if 
it is usable and really brings noticable FP performance. If so, then:
- rename the conf/machine/include/tune-ep9312.inc to 
conf/machine/include/tune-ep93xx.inc
- make the machine conf files use tune-ep93xx.inc instead of 
tune-arm920t.inc

Of course, i don't want to break anything, hence this email.
What people thinks about this?

Finally I would like to see the machines ts72xx and ts7800 officially 
supported by openembedded and/or angstrom (so that we can use 
Narcissus for example!;))

I'm willing to be a machine maintainer/mentor for the ts72xx and the 
ts7800. At work we use them in lot of our products, and we decided to 
switch to OE/Angstron distro (after encouraging test results).
What's the procedure for this exactly?

Regards,
Chris.

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