[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Thiago A. Corrêa]

r21552 | ulf | 2008-03-29 08:14:27 -0300 (Sat, 29 Mar 2008) | 1 line

Remove AVR32 gdb patches duplicating prepatched source
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r21551 | ulf | 2008-03-29 08:09:49 -0300 (Sat, 29 Mar 2008) | 1 line

Remove binutils AVR32 patches duplicating external source
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r21550 | ulf | 2008-03-29 08:07:12 -0300 (Sat, 29 Mar 2008) | 1 line

Remove avr32 gcc patches duplicating external source
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r21549 | ulf | 2008-03-29 08:04:30 -0300 (Sat, 29 Mar 2008) | 1 line

Remove duplication of AVR32 toolchain


You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
not for no reason.
On top of that, external toolchain tries to download prepatched
toochain from a site that you control, but that has no such files to
download from.
For some Godly unknown reason, there was no commit message on the mailling list.

Please revert your changes asap.

Regards,
   Thiago A. Correa

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Ulf Samuelsson]

> You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
> not for no reason.

The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.
That is why the external toolchain was added.
Also, IIRC some patches broke other architectures.

> On top of that, external toolchain tries to download prepatched
> toochain from a site that you control, but that has no such files to
> download from.

BR2_ATMEL_MIRROR should be ftp://www.at91.com/pub/buildroot/
I see the files in this location.

> For some Godly unknown reason, there was no commit message on the mailling list.
> 
> Please revert your changes asap.
> 

No, if there are problems, it should be fixed within the external toolchain
to avoid adding those megabytes, which are of no interest to AVR32 users.
There are hooks to patch the external toolchain if neccessary.

 
Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson                ulf at atmel.com
Atmel Nordic AB
Mail:  Box 2033, 174 02 Sundbyberg, Sweden
Visit:  Kavalleriv?gen 24, 174 58 Sundbyberg, Sweden
Phone +46 (8) 441 54 22     Fax +46 (8) 441 54 29
GSM    +46 (706) 22 44 57

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Thiago A. Corrêa]

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Ulf Samuelsson <ulf.samuelsson@atmel.com> wrote:
> > You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
>  > not for no reason.
>
>  The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.

Google's entire svn history has 3Mb, including the AVR32 patches plus
careless local svn mv's. How is that too much bloat?

>  That is why the external toolchain was added.
>  Also, IIRC some patches broke other architectures.
>

That's why people is working on selectively applying patches based on $ARCH

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Ulf Samuelsson]

> On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Ulf Samuelsson <ulf.samuelsson@atmel.com> wrote:
>> > You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
>>  > not for no reason.
>>
>>  The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.
> 
> Google's entire svn history has 3Mb, including the AVR32 patches plus
> careless local svn mv's. How is that too much bloat?
> 

The AVR32 patches are larger than that, just for one version.
Adding patches for several versions of the toolchain will make this worse.

>>  That is why the external toolchain was added.
>>  Also, IIRC some patches broke other architectures.
>>
> 
> That's why people is working on selectively applying patches based on $ARCH
> 
> From my point of view, those are clutter:
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.24/linux-2.6.24-at91.patch
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.20.4/linux-2.6.20.4-atmel.patch
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.1/linux-2.6.21.1-at91.patch
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.1/linux-2.6.21.1-at91-1-update.patch
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.5/linux-2.6.21.5-at91-1-update.patch
> ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.5/linux-2.6.21.5-at91.patch
> 

Obviously it would be better to download these patches instead
of storing them in the buildroot tree...
They will eventually go away, when I have enough time to fix.

> Not to mention having a separate u-boot, just because the Atmel ARM
> didn't get to get their patches upstream, while AVR32 did.

They were provided to the U-Boot project and were ignored without comments,
so the AT91 team eventually got fed up.
The AT91 team has started resubmitting patches, but it is not in the state
that it is usable for all relevant parts.
Since that is prepatched, we are talking about minimal additions to the buildroot svn.

>>  > On top of that, external toolchain tries to download prepatched
>>  > toochain from a site that you control, but that has no such files to
>>  > download from.
>>
>>  BR2_ATMEL_MIRROR should be ftp://www.at91.com/pub/buildroot/
>>  I see the files in this location.

The defconfigs were wrong, but is now updated.

> 
> There is no gcc 4.2.2 in there. There is no gdb-4.7.1 in there.

The AVR32 team has been working on a new version of the toolchain
but I have been mostly offline for the last two weeks, so I did not check.
I do not think it will take too much time to fix this.

> 
>>  > Please revert your changes asap.
>>  >
>>
>>  No, if there are problems, it should be fixed within the external toolchain
>>  to avoid adding those megabytes, which are of no interest to AVR32 users.
>>  There are hooks to patch the external toolchain if neccessary.
> 
> Then I guess we will all be getting FTP user accounts to your server
> now? So that we can fix things within the external toolchain?
> I'm interested in those few kb (namely 915826 bytes). Last time I
> checked, I was in the universe of AVR32 users.

Why, you can apply patches as usual, but the patches are located
in the target/device/Atmel/toolchain directory.

> 
> You didn't even care to test your changes, and despite protests
> removed the toolchain support anyway. You are taking away our freedom
> to update, fix, do whatever with the toolchain from within buildroot.

If you check above, you see it is not like that.
You can modify the external toolchain by applying patches,
so you have the freedom you want.

If you can find another host where the stuff can be located
then it is easy to move it. I just put it on that server for convenience
and I see only drawbacks that it cannot be updated by other
members of the buildroot community.

> Not to mention breaking things up and making me and a hell lot of
> other people lose their day's or week's work.
> Please revert your changes asap.
> 

As I mentioned, the toolchain breaks other toolchains so this is not a good idea.
You also have the problem that you want to apply some of the buildroot patches
but not all.

> Regards,
>   Thiago A. Correa
>



Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Arnar Mar Sig]

On May 6, 2008, at 9:57 AM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
>> On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Ulf Samuelsson <ulf.samuelsson@atmel.com 
>> > wrote:
>>>> You removed something that was working in favor of something that  
>>>> is
>>>> not for no reason.
>>>
>>> The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.
>>
>> Google's entire svn history has 3Mb, including the AVR32 patches plus
>> careless local svn mv's. How is that too much bloat?
>>
>
> The AVR32 patches are larger than that, just for one version.
> Adding patches for several versions of the toolchain will make this  
> worse.

antab at imbakassi:~/v100sc2$ du -sch buildroot-upstream/
131M	buildroot-upstream/

antab at imbakassi:~/v100sc2/buildroot-fork/toolchain/gcc$ du -ch 4.2.2/ 
*avr32*
900K	4.2.2/900-gcc-4.2.2.atmel.1.0.8.patch.avr32
4.0K	4.2.2/901-avr32-no-cond-exec-before-reload-by-default.patch.avr32
904K	total

Thats under 1MB for one version, and thous patches dont change that  
often. I dont mind that patches are removed for old toolchains, but  
IMO they should not be removed. It pisses me alot more to have to  
download a 43MB with the prepatched toolchain source from a dead slow  
server every time its updated.
I also build for x86 and now i have to keep and download source for 2  
toolchains, thats 86MB while it could have been 44MB...

>>
>> You didn't even care to test your changes, and despite protests
>> removed the toolchain support anyway. You are taking away our freedom
>> to update, fix, do whatever with the toolchain from within buildroot.
>
> If you check above, you see it is not like that.
> You can modify the external toolchain by applying patches,
> so you have the freedom you want.
>
> If you can find another host where the stuff can be located
> then it is easy to move it. I just put it on that server for  
> convenience
> and I see only drawbacks that it cannot be updated by other
> members of the buildroot community.

I'm can donate a server for storing thous patches, could be setup up  
as a SVN repo so members can easy add to it (and keeping track of  
everything), and then a script that checks that stuff out and makes it  
accessable via FTP and HTTP at the same site.

Greets
	Arnar mar Sig

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Thiago A. Corrêa]

>  > On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 6:41 PM, Ulf Samuelsson <ulf.samuelsson@atmel.com> wrote:
>  >> > You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
>  >>  > not for no reason.
>  >>
>  >>  The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.
>  >
>  > Google's entire svn history has 3Mb, including the AVR32 patches plus
>  > careless local svn mv's. How is that too much bloat?
>  >
>
>  The AVR32 patches are larger than that, just for one version.
>  Adding patches for several versions of the toolchain will make this worse.
>

Then I will use the same argument you are using to defend your spin
off of u-boot: As the Atmel legal department decides to actually do
some thinking and aprove the patches to FSF, they will go away. I have
just did what I could, openned ticket with support about the issue and
I'm contacting the Sales Manager for my reagion, Carlos Unda, to
complain about the current gcc support state of the silicon, since he
asked the last time we met. Unfortunally I can't do more than that.

>  >>  That is why the external toolchain was added.
>  >>  Also, IIRC some patches broke other architectures.
>  >>
>  >
>  > That's why people is working on selectively applying patches based on $ARCH
>  >
>  > From my point of view, those are clutter:
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.24/linux-2.6.24-at91.patch
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.20.4/linux-2.6.20.4-atmel.patch
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.1/linux-2.6.21.1-at91.patch
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.1/linux-2.6.21.1-at91-1-update.patch
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.5/linux-2.6.21.5-at91-1-update.patch
>  > ./arch-arm/kernel-patches-2.6.21.5/linux-2.6.21.5-at91.patch
>  >
>
>  Obviously it would be better to download these patches instead
>  of storing them in the buildroot tree...
>  They will eventually go away, when I have enough time to fix.
>

Then why not focus on the platform that you use on a daily basis
instead of the one that you clearly do not? Let a decision like this,
that affects a different user base then you to the actual users. Back
when you touched the topic, I have warned that the prepatched
toolchain didn't work.

>  > Not to mention having a separate u-boot, just because the Atmel ARM
>  > didn't get to get their patches upstream, while AVR32 did.
>
>  They were provided to the U-Boot project and were ignored without comments,
>  so the AT91 team eventually got fed up.
>  The AT91 team has started resubmitting patches, but it is not in the state
>  that it is usable for all relevant parts.
>  Since that is prepatched, we are talking about minimal additions to the buildroot svn.

By the definition that you used to destroy our build, that's bloat,
let's remove it.

>  >
>  > There is no gcc 4.2.2 in there. There is no gdb-4.7.1 in there.
>
>  The AVR32 team has been working on a new version of the toolchain
>  but I have been mostly offline for the last two weeks, so I did not check.
>  I do not think it will take too much time to fix this.
>

4.2.2 has been there for a long time, and is known to be stable. The
only other toolchain version other than 4.2.2 that is capable of
building a working image is 4.1.2, and it had it's issues of it's own.
This is no excuse for not having 4.2.2 at the ATMEL_MIRROR what ever
it is.
Had it being possible to all buildroot members to fix it, we would not
be having this discussion. Had you tested your changes, it would be
noticed.

I asked many times, do not remove the patches. Doing so behind
everyone's back was a huge lack of respect to the users of AVR32 and
to the original submitter. I wouldn't expect many to keep submiting to
buildroot with this atitute (now talking to a broader audience).

Please be considerative of other people's work before taking
unilateral actions like this.

>  >
>  >>  > Please revert your changes asap.
>  >>  >
>  >>
>  >>  No, if there are problems, it should be fixed within the external toolchain
>  >>  to avoid adding those megabytes, which are of no interest to AVR32 users.
>  >>  There are hooks to patch the external toolchain if neccessary.
>  >
>  > Then I guess we will all be getting FTP user accounts to your server
>  > now? So that we can fix things within the external toolchain?
>  > I'm interested in those few kb (namely 915826 bytes). Last time I
>  > checked, I was in the universe of AVR32 users.
>
>  Why, you can apply patches as usual, but the patches are located
>  in the target/device/Atmel/toolchain directory.
>

But I can't update the toolchain without your intervention, and I have
to reserve 50Mb of additional HD space for the download, as Amar has
mentioned. Isn't this worst?

>  >
>  > You didn't even care to test your changes, and despite protests
>  > removed the toolchain support anyway. You are taking away our freedom
>  > to update, fix, do whatever with the toolchain from within buildroot.
>
>  If you check above, you see it is not like that.
>  You can modify the external toolchain by applying patches,
>  so you have the freedom you want.

Not quite, if I want to update the toolchain, not only for myself, I
have to figure out another host, change at least 4 defconfigs, besides
the usual *.in files. Not only that, but external toolchain is used by
only a fraction of the buildroot users, thus less tested and
maintained. As it has happened before, it might break and it might be
several weeks before someone do something about it.

>  If you can find another host where the stuff can be located
>  then it is easy to move it. I just put it on that server for convenience
>  and I see only drawbacks that it cannot be updated by other
>  members of the buildroot community.
>

Shouldn't this be drawback enough? What's the difference of that and
forking the whole project altogether?

>  > Not to mention breaking things up and making me and a hell lot of
>  > other people lose their day's or week's work.
>  > Please revert your changes asap.
>  >
>
>  As I mentioned, the toolchain breaks other toolchains so this is not a good idea.
>  You also have the problem that you want to apply some of the buildroot patches
>  but not all.

Fixed it in google svn by a simple \*.patch{,.$(ARCH)}
There I reverted your changes, and things work again, and it should
build for all platforms, specially since John has been working on it.


Regards,
   Thiago A. Correa

[Buildroot] Latest AVR32 toolchain sources uploaded tp BR2_ATMEL_MIRROR

[Ulf Samuelsson]

I uploaded 

avr32-gcc-4.2.2.atmel.1.0.8.tar.gz      ==> gcc-4.2.2-avr32-1.0.8.tar.bz2
avr32-binutils-2.17.atmel.1.2.6.tar.gz  ==> binutils-2.17-avr32-2.1.4.tar.bz2
avr32-gdb-6.7.1.atmel.1.0.3.tar.bz2    ==> gdb-6.7.1-avr32-1.0.3.tar.bz2

to $(BR2_ATMEL_MIRROR) = ftp://www.at91.com/pub/buildroot today.

Since I can download from this mirror at 40 Mbit/s I doubt
that a new mirror is needed for download speed purposes.

If someone wants to set up another alternative mirror to
allow write access to anyone, then It is not hard to 
fix so that the user can select a mirror from a list of mirrors.

Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Arnar Mar Sig]

Ulf,

You talk about us AVR32 people breaking packages, not testing our  
changes and demanding that we take our effort at maintaining packages  
and arch support to a separate tree. But still you do all off thous  
things, breaking packages, removing needed arch patches, not testing  
your changes and generally fucking up everything except AT91 support,  
WHY?

In my opinion, Buildroot is a collection of PATCHES to make cross- 
compiling easier, not to create some broken package system that i have  
to download every source and patch myself and patch by hand.

My 10cent in the penis fight.
	Arnar Mar Sig.


On May 5, 2008, at 9:41 PM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:

>> You removed something that was working in favor of something that is
>> not for no reason.
>
> The Atmel patches adds way too much bloat to the svn.
> That is why the external toolchain was added.
> Also, IIRC some patches broke other architectures.
>
>> On top of that, external toolchain tries to download prepatched
>> toochain from a site that you control, but that has no such files to
>> download from.
>
> BR2_ATMEL_MIRROR should be ftp://www.at91.com/pub/buildroot/
> I see the files in this location.
>
>> For some Godly unknown reason, there was no commit message on the  
>> mailling list.
>>
>> Please revert your changes asap.
>>
>
> No, if there are problems, it should be fixed within the external  
> toolchain
> to avoid adding those megabytes, which are of no interest to AVR32  
> users.
> There are hooks to patch the external toolchain if neccessary.
>
>
> Best Regards
> Ulf Samuelsson                ulf at atmel.com
> Atmel Nordic AB
> Mail:  Box 2033, 174 02 Sundbyberg, Sweden
> Visit:  Kavalleriv?gen 24, 174 58 Sundbyberg, Sweden
> Phone +46 (8) 441 54 22     Fax +46 (8) 441 54 29
> GSM    +46 (706) 22 44 57
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> buildroot mailing list
> buildroot at uclibc.org
> http://busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/buildroot

[Buildroot] Ulf, you broke AVR32, why?

[Ulf Samuelsson]

> Ulf,

> You talk about us AVR32 people breaking packages, not testing our  
> changes and demanding that we take our effort at maintaining packages  
> and arch support to a separate tree. But still you do all off thous  
> things, breaking packages, removing needed arch patches, not testing  
> your changes and generally fucking up everything except AT91 support,  
> WHY?

> In my opinion, Buildroot is a collection of PATCHES to make cross- 
> compiling easier, not to create some broken package system that i have  
> to download every source and patch myself and patch by hand.

> My 10cent in the penis fight.
> Arnar Mar Sig.

Yeah right,
I made sure that AVR32 is supported by introducing the AVR32 to buildroot
in the first place and by ensuring that the AVR32 product line adopted
buildroot as the main delivery vehicle for their Linux.

When I introduced AVR32 support in buildroot, I made a
decision to use a prepatched source for various reasons.
One of them is that using a non-supported architecture
does not scale well, because that means that svn buildroot svn
grows by a significant amount every time a new toolchain is supported.
Another is that I noticed that the autotools version is really sensitive
causing problems with a number of customers.

I do not think that using prepatched source is the same thing as using a different tree.

I dont "accuse" people for breaking packages. I note that the redundant
toolchain support that was added later cause complaints both
for breaking other architectures and for size.

Since the patches are NOT neccessary, as you claim, 
because you can download exactly the same thing by
using the prepatched toolchain, 
the easiest way is to remove the offending patches.

The system works if the mirror has the proper value, 
which is has if the .config file is configured from scratch.

If you want to apply patches to the prepatched tree, you can,  
so your comment about manually downloading patches
and applying manually is 

As I see it there is one problem, and that is that the ATMEL MIRROR
is not write accessible to the public. I can't change that for the current mirror, 
but as I mentioned previously, 
I do not see any value in me beeing the only one able to update this,
only disadvantages, so anyone volunteering to host the mirror
and make it accessible to all buildroot maintainers are welcome.

=======================
Once we updated the prepatched toolchain from John's site we will be able to:

1) Download latest AVR32 toolchain in a prepatched format.
2) Apply any patch located in "target/device/Atmel/toolchain" automatically
    (Including selected patches copied from the toolchain directory)

I really do nor see the problem with this.

Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson