"Kevin D. Kissell" wrote:

Here at MIPS Technologies, we use Linux internally
for design verification, experiments, benchmarking,
etc., and as a consequence Carsten Langgaard and
myself have both been active in this forum, and have
tried to help the general Linux/MIPS community as
best we can with the limited time that we can dedicate
to the problem, in terms of suggested patches, bug
fixes, cleanups, integration of needed components
like the FPU emulator, etc.

I think that one of the larger hurdles that we have had
to overcome is a common set of tools that can build a current
kernel and userland application set from a cross-developed
environment. There seems to have been a
divergence between kernel tools and userland tools specifically in
the area of recent kernel 2.4.x and GLIBC 2.2.x that is a major
headache for delivering a toolchain that is on par with the
intel equivalent designs. It is tough to offer a linux design that
requires multiple toolchains one to build the kernel, one to build
userland apps.

I have a question for those of you who are doing
Linux work for *new* platforms (as opposed to the
SGI/DEC legacy box support people). IF, and I
emphasize the word *if*, MIPS Technologies were
make a bigger investment in MIPS/Linux technology,
be it kernel enhancements, cross/native tools,
userland ports, libraries, or whatever, what would
be your prioritized "wish list"?

    1. A toolchain that will build 2.4.x version of the kernel as well
        as GLIBC 2.2 dependent applications. Preferrably this would
        be a cross-development environment. (This would require
         GLIBC 2.2 accessable as a cross-compiled environment

2. Userland app ports

Feel free to respond by point-to-point email, though
responses that are also copied to the mailing list
might provoke some interesting and enlightening
debate.
Regards,
Kevin K.

From past experience it's easy to see that without a
solid set of development tools, it is hard to justify using
a particular CPU or hardware.

-- 
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Jeff Harrell                    Work:  (801) 619-6104 
Broadband Access group/TI       
jharrell@ti.com
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