[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[konrad at gaisler.com]

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Hello everybody,
Currently at Aeroflex Gaisler we are running a old
Snapgear 2.0 dist. Now we are searching for a replacement
and got from "Sam Ravnborg" <sam@ravnborg.org> the
hint to use buildroot that we intend to switch to now. 
Aeroflex Gaisler is marketing the OpenSource Leon3 processor
(that is distributed as a vhdl model and can be synthesized
by the user). The Leon3 processor is a fully SparcV8 conformant
processor that support also a SRMMU. Linux is ported on
it and the Leon Port is included in the recent kernels. 
Currently I also try to submit patches for the Leon3 settings to
GCC? and sent a copyleft assignment to FSF so I hope
the Leon3 cpu will be in the 4.5.x toolchains soon. 
From Sam Ravnborg I heard that there is the thought to
take away the sparc port from buildroot, I would like to vote
not doing so. In the future we plan to activly develop the Sparc
branch of uclibc and buildroot, test and submit patches. 
On Monday I'll submit 4.4.3 patch and sparc config settings patch
to add a leon cpu build... 
-- Greetings Konrad
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[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "konrad" == konrad  <konrad@gaisler.com> writes:

Hi Konrad,

 konrad> Hello everybody,
 konrad> Currently at Aeroflex Gaisler we are running a old
 konrad> Snapgear 2.0 dist. Now we are searching for a replacement
 konrad> and got from "Sam Ravnborg" <sam@ravnborg.org> the
 konrad> hint to use buildroot that we intend to switch to now. 
 konrad> Aeroflex Gaisler is marketing the OpenSource Leon3 processor
 konrad> (that is distributed as a vhdl model and can be synthesized
 konrad> by the user). The Leon3 processor is a fully SparcV8 conformant
 konrad> processor that support also a SRMMU. Linux is ported on
 konrad> it and the Leon Port is included in the recent kernels. 
 konrad> Currently I also try to submit patches for the Leon3 settings to
 konrad> GCC? and sent a copyleft assignment to FSF so I hope
 konrad> the Leon3 cpu will be in the 4.5.x toolchains soon. 

Ahh yes, I remember looking at Leon3 a number of years ago..

 konrad> From Sam Ravnborg I heard that there is the thought to
 konrad> take away the sparc port from buildroot, I would like to vote
 konrad> not doing so. In the future we plan to activly develop the Sparc
 konrad> branch of uclibc and buildroot, test and submit patches. 
 konrad> On Monday I'll submit 4.4.3 patch and sparc config settings patch
 konrad> to add a leon cpu build... 

The problem with Sparc was that noone was interested in maintaining it /
had access to hw to test stuff, and various issues with uClibc / gcc.

I have no issues keeping Sparc support if the situation changes, but
there isn't much sense in pretending to support Sparc if it doesn't
really work.

So I'll keep it for now and see what happens..

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard

[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[konrad at gaisler.com]

On Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:50:37  0200, Peter Korsgaard  wrote:
>>>>> "konrad" == konrad  <konrad@gaisler.com> writes:
  >
  > Hi Konrad,
  >
  >  konrad> Hello everybody,
  >  konrad> Currently at Aeroflex Gaisler we are running a old
  >  konrad> Snapgear 2.0 dist. Now we are searching for a replacement
  >  konrad> and got from "Sam Ravnborg" <sam@ravnborg.org> the
  >  konrad> hint to use buildroot that we intend to switch to now. 
  >  konrad> Aeroflex Gaisler is marketing the OpenSource Leon3 processor
  >  konrad> (that is distributed as a vhdl model and can be synthesized
  >  konrad> by the user). The Leon3 processor is a fully SparcV8 conformant
  >  konrad> processor that support also a SRMMU. Linux is ported on
  >  konrad> it and the Leon Port is included in the recent kernels. 
  >  konrad> Currently I also try to submit patches for the Leon3 settings to
  >  konrad> GCC? and sent a copyleft assignment to FSF so I hope
  >  konrad> the Leon3 cpu will be in the 4.5.x toolchains soon. 
  >
  > Ahh yes, I remember looking at Leon3 a number of years ago.. 
  >
  >  konrad> From Sam Ravnborg I heard that there is the thought to
  >  konrad> take away the sparc port from buildroot, I would like to vote
  >  konrad> not doing so. In the future we plan to activly develop the Sparc
  >  konrad> branch of uclibc and buildroot, test and submit patches. 
  >  konrad> On Monday I'll submit 4.4.3 patch and sparc config settings patch
  >  konrad> to add a leon cpu build... 
  >
  > The problem with Sparc was that noone was interested in maintaining it /
  > had access to hw to test stuff, and various issues with uClibc / gcc. 
  >
  > I have no issues keeping Sparc support if the situation changes, but
  > there isn't much sense in pretending to support Sparc if it doesn't
  > really work. 
?
My shortterm goal is to get buildroot to build a linux image with romfs
that includes libc shared and some more advanced app like a ssh. That
should cover/test already a lot functionality. So far in snapgear 2.0 we
only used uClibc static, we had made quite a few patches to uclibc, 
didnt submit them to the
uclibc though. It was also a fairly old uclibc that we used, it seems that
uclibc has gotten better in the meantime (while we sticked still to the
old version...). I think that if Gaisler would switch to buildroot and
Leon users would start using it the sparc the sparc part would be
maintained and running.I'll press this now and will post my results here... 
-- Greetings Konrad
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Ps: Note at the side: If no hardware is available the evaluation version of
the sparcleon simulator called TSIM can be used, so that non sparc users
can run/test/verify too. 
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>
  > So I'll keep it for now and see what happens.. 
  >
  > --
  > Bye, Peter Korsgaard
  >
  >

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[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "konrad" == konrad  <konrad@gaisler.com> writes:

Hi,

 konrad> My shortterm goal is to get buildroot to build a linux image
 konrad> with romfs that includes libc shared and some more advanced app
 konrad> like a ssh. That should cover/test already a lot
 konrad> functionality. So far in snapgear 2.0 we only used uClibc
 konrad> static, we had made quite a few patches to uclibc, didnt submit
 konrad> them to the uclibc though. It was also a fairly old uclibc that
 konrad> we used, it seems that uclibc has gotten better in the meantime
 konrad> (while we sticked still to the old version...). I think that if
 konrad> Gaisler would switch to buildroot and Leon users would start
 konrad> using it the sparc the sparc part would be maintained and
 konrad> running.I'll press this now and will post my results

Ok, good - Shared linking on sparc indeed used to be broken as far as I
remember.

 konrad> Ps: Note at the side: If no hardware is available the
 konrad> evaluation version of the sparcleon simulator called TSIM can
 konrad> be used, so that non sparc users can run/test/verify too. ?

What about something a bit more standard like qemu-system-sparc? We're
already using qemu to test E.G. arm.

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard

[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[Michael S. Zick]

On Fri September 3 2010, Peter Korsgaard wrote:
> >>>>> "konrad" == konrad  <konrad@gaisler.com> writes:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>  konrad> My shortterm goal is to get buildroot to build a linux image
>  konrad> with romfs that includes libc shared and some more advanced app
>  konrad> like a ssh. That should cover/test already a lot
>  konrad> functionality. So far in snapgear 2.0 we only used uClibc
>  konrad> static, we had made quite a few patches to uclibc, didnt submit
>  konrad> them to the uclibc though. It was also a fairly old uclibc that
>  konrad> we used, it seems that uclibc has gotten better in the meantime
>  konrad> (while we sticked still to the old version...). I think that if
>  konrad> Gaisler would switch to buildroot and Leon users would start
>  konrad> using it the sparc the sparc part would be maintained and
>  konrad> running.I'll press this now and will post my results
> 
> Ok, good - Shared linking on sparc indeed used to be broken as far as I
> remember.
> 

From correspondence with Rob Landley. . .
Sparc 32bit should be working, Sparc 64bit may still have problems.
Both should be fixed at the time of his v1.0 project release.

>  konrad> Ps: Note at the side: If no hardware is available the
>  konrad> evaluation version of the sparcleon simulator called TSIM can
>  konrad> be used, so that non sparc users can run/test/verify too. ?
> 
> What about something a bit more standard like qemu-system-sparc? We're
> already using qemu to test E.G. arm.
> 

Perhaps a quick way to do that, would be with Aboriginal Linux 
(previously: Firmware Linux)
http://aboriginal.impactlinux.com/

I don't see anything in the pre-built binaries newer than Rob's fixes for Sparc;
but you might give the 0.9.11 build a try:
http://landley.net/aboriginal/downloads/binaries/system-image-sparc.tar.bz2

If you have access to an Intel based machine, just do a build from source for Sparc;
the directions can be found on Rob's site - it is a fairly simple process;
use the "current repository tar-ball", the qemu-system image generated should "just work".
Although I can't claim to have tried it myself - last I heard only problems with sh4 where
holding back the v1.0 release.

Mike

[Buildroot] Gaisler sparc-leon

[konrad at gaisler.com]

On Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:50:06  0200, Peter Korsgaard  wrote:
>>>>> "konrad" == konrad  <konrad@gaisler.com> writes:
  >
  > Hi,
  >
  >  konrad> My shortterm goal is to get buildroot to build a linux image
  >  konrad> with romfs that includes libc shared and some more advanced app
  >  konrad> like a ssh. That should cover/test already a lot
  >  konrad> functionality. So far in snapgear 2.0 we only used uClibc
  >  konrad> static, we had made quite a few patches to uclibc, didnt submit
  >  konrad> them to the uclibc though. It was also a fairly old uclibc that
  >  konrad> we used, it seems that uclibc has gotten better in the meantime
  >  konrad> (while we sticked still to the old version...). I think that if
  >  konrad> Gaisler would switch to buildroot and Leon users would start
  >  konrad> using it the sparc the sparc part would be maintained and
  >  konrad> running.I'll press this now and will post my results
  >
  > Ok, good - Shared linking on sparc indeed used to be broken as far as I
  > remember. 
  >
  >  konrad> Ps: Note at the side: If no hardware is available the
  >  konrad> evaluation version of the sparcleon simulator called TSIM can
  >  konrad> be used, so that non sparc users can run/test/verify too. ?
  >
  > What about something a bit more standard like qemu-system-sparc? We're
  > already using qemu to test E.G. arm. 
?
I didnt try qemu-system-sparc yet, only ran qemu-user-sparc once but saw that
fork() didnt work there ( simple programms however started right away which
was impressive enough). qemu-system-sparc wouldn't be a Leon system
but there might be advantages though related to testing. Internally
however we'll well have to stick to TSIM and Leon hardware. But still, if it
would enable to integrate Sparc into a general testscript framework that you
maybe have and run to test buildroot, then it might be? worthwile. 
But I guess I first get something simple running... 
-- Greetings Konrad
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>
  > --
  > Bye, Peter Korsgaard
  >
  >

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