Changes in Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded

Changes in Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

NOTE: I skipped "openembedded-devel" ML cause most of users of Linaro
layers also read OE Core ML.

As I will leave Linaro at the end of May I would like to write some kind
of summary of current state of Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded.

At Linaro we have 3 layers:

1. meta-aarch64
2. meta-linaro
3. meta-linaro-toolchain

First one is BSP kind. I know that it had some issues which affected
each build which had it in BBLAYERS but I fixed those issues. I would
like to thank Khem Raj for pointing me at those.

We have git version of binutils there due to some changes which were not
present in 2.23 line. But use of this version is not required as builds
are fine with OE Core one.

We have "tune-armv8.inc" in this layer as well. There was attempt to
merge that into OE Core but "/lib or /lib64" discussion started and at
that time I decided to skip it. There are similar discussions at GCC and
Glibc mailing lists. Once they sort that out OE tune file will be
adapted by someone (I hope).

Rest of recipes can be split into 2-3 types. Few (like sysprof, emacs)
just disable recipes for AArch64. Other have extra patches to add
missing functionality or defines. And we have Linaro kernel for AArch64
there.

Second layer contains ARMv7a(b) machine definitions used for our machine
independent builds and some recipes.

There are no patches for OE recipes here. The only exception is busybox
where we enable "dpkg(-deb)" command which we need for our tools used to
merge rootfs with hardware support.

We have "recipes-extra" where we keep new recipes which may not be in a
nicest state so are not yet merged into OpenEmbedded (or have no use
there like "meta-toolchain-hhvm" one).

"recipes-linaro" is for our stuff. Images, automatic root shell on
serial port etc.

And last but not least is toolchain layer. Everything here is related to
gcc-linaro and Linaro binary cross toolchains (armv7a and aarch64 ones).
GCC 4.6 and 4.7 is there but 4.6 one will be removed when 4.8 will be
added into OE Core.

Who will maintain those layers after my leave? This was not decided yet.
There are few guys at Linaro who know how to use OpenEmbedded but most
of them is outside of Builds and Baselines team.

If you have any questions then better ask now.

Re: Changes in Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded

[Trevor Woerner]

On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Marcin Juszkiewicz
<marcin.juszkiewicz@linaro.org> wrote:
> Who will maintain those layers after my leave? This was not decided yet.
> There are few guys at Linaro who know how to use OpenEmbedded but most
> of them is outside of Builds and Baselines team.

To me this implies that these layers and this effort of yours isn't
part of any "official" Linaro build process/procedure. Would this
assumption be correct?

Re: Changes in Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

W dniu 09.05.2013 20:42, Trevor Woerner pisze:
> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Marcin Juszkiewicz 
> <marcin.juszkiewicz@linaro.org> wrote:
>> Who will maintain those layers after my leave? This was not decided
>> yet. There are few guys at Linaro who know how to use OpenEmbedded
>> but most of them is outside of Builds and Baselines team.


> To me this implies that these layers and this effort of yours isn't 
> part of any "official" Linaro build process/procedure. Would this 
> assumption be correct?

No.

First Linaro layer for OpenEmbedded was created by Ken Werner from
Toolchain Working Group as they considered OE as a test tool. Then
AArch64 bootstrap was needed so I stepped in and took maintenance of it
(Ken was not at Linaro at that time), added meta-aarch64, cleaned up etc.

Those layers are used as part of official Linaro build process. All
AArch64 rootfs images are built using OpenEmbedded. Note that this
excludes kernels which (for some reasons) were cross built as Ubuntu
packages.

At Linaro we have many teams and some of them are using OpenEmbedded or
will do it soon. One of reasons is lack of ARM big-endian distributions
on a market.

Look at numbers from "git shortlog":

Marcin Juszkiewicz (341):
Ken Werner (28):
Riku Voipio (17):
Khem Raj (7):
Ricardo Salveti de Araujo (5):
Fathi Boudra (2):

Ken is not at Linaro, Khem never was and those commits are fixes from
him, Ricardo is back at Canonical. Riku has OE knowledge but also lot of
other duties.

And so far only OpenSUSE has packages for AArch64 mass built while all
Linaro tools were made for Ubuntu repositories...

Re: Changes in Linaro layers for OpenEmbedded

[Tom Gall]

I'll also add that we (the Graphics Working Group) are using it as
we're bringing up the graphics stack on ARMv8.

Patches soon.

On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:23 AM, Fathi Boudra <fathi.boudra@linaro.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 9 May 2013 19:57, Marcin Juszkiewicz <marcin.juszkiewicz@linaro.org> wrote:
>> Who will maintain those layers after my leave? This was not decided yet.
>> There are few guys at Linaro who know how to use OpenEmbedded but most
>> of them is outside of Builds and Baselines team.
>>
>> If you have any questions then better ask now.
>
> Let me clarify a bit this part since it's Marcin's personal opinion.
>
> OpenEmbedded baseline is part of the official Linaro releases.
> It's maintained, we produce daily builds and test them.
> As of today, it's mainly used for ARMv8 bring up and is expanded to
> ARMv7 for covering Toolchain CI.
> Later on, it's planned to be even more extended for LNG use cases.
>
> The team in charge of these builds is Builds and Baselines Team.
> There's capable people inside the team to take over OE maintenance and
> that's the plan.
>
> In short, I don't expect any disruption for OpenEmbedded baseline builds.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Fathi Boudra
> Builds and Baselines Manager | Release Manager
> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs
>
> _______________________________________________
> linaro-dev mailing list
> linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org
> http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev



-- 
Regards,
Tom

"Where's the kaboom!? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering
kaboom!" Marvin Martian
Tech Lead, Graphics Working Group | Linaro.org │ Open source software
for ARM SoCs
w) tom.gall att linaro.org
h) tom_gall att mac.com