I was buried with work in the last couple of days, so whats new on my GSoC-project:

• a lot of patches went into factory and some more are queued
• fixed issues with qemu
• most yast packages already building
• zypper builds, but requires some more bugfixing
• X11 builds
• cross-compilation stable, speed is good

Todo:

• create image (bootable to console)
• create image (bootable to x11 on beagleboard)
• evaluate switch in webfrontend for cross-feature
• project documentation/GSoC

This weeks topic was the integration of the cross-compilation mode into the build environment. But it’s more than just a cross-toolchain – it’s a speed-boost for our ARM build environment. As of today, the source is deployed in the repository Base:build:arm:cross. It’s not fully bootstrapped because of the current high load and the upcoming downtime – so watch out for changes there and in Base:build:arm.

But what are these “speedup’s” ? First, you’ve to know that in our build environment the ARM binaries are executed through an emulation-layer. This works on the cost of speed. The goal is now, to exchange some key parts in a transparent manner with native x86 binaries: no emulation, no slowdown. Sounds reasonable, but is it easily possible ?
I had to take care not to mix stuff too much because the environment would break. But now I’ve to say:  WOW, this worked incredibly well  .

The distinctive feature of our approach in comparison to usual cross-build environments is that we use the best of native environment emulation and the speed of cross-compilation. Because of this combination we don’t have to patch the individual packages to make them cross-compilation ready. This is a new way of cross-compiling suitable also for large number of packages. A detailed overview about the different crossbuild types can be found on this page.
Another feature to note is that the exchanged binaries (replacing ARM with x86 in the build environment) also don’t need heavy patching and there’s no need to compile them as static binaries. All of them are normal distribution packages.

A switch in the project enables/disables the new features. With the new changes in place, the speed could be vastly increased. Some figures:
* package rpm
* package glibc w/o locales

Thats a drop from about x15 to x2 in comparison to the native x86 build-time !! See it yourself when the “crosscompiled” repo in Base:build:arm is up and running.

In other words: “Warp 5, Mr. Sulu !”

openSUSE@ARM/GSoC: weekly status

The topic of this week was to speed up the build. As I mentioned last week, the
prototype in Base:build:arm is compiling in an emulated environment and thus is
quite slow.

I prepared a cross-toolchain from the sources of binutils, gcc44 and glibc from
openSUSE:Factory. Now its time to integrate this into the build process.
This will improve the performace of the compilation itself. But other areas
in the build process can also be improved, just think of the bash.

Some patches for the Build Service were also commited to svn.

In progress / todo:
* prepare / submit fixes for rpm
* more work on cross-toolchain

Hi everyone!

This week was exciting – we deployed a first prototype of a minimal ARM environment on build.opensuse.org in the repository Base:build:arm. It’s a set of packages which is capable of bootstrapping itself and still in an early stage as it’s using full emulation. Next station: speed-up !

I submitted also some patches for inclusion into the openSUSE Build Service. One of these patches will help us to a address an issue with rpmbuild when doing builds for the ARM architecture.

In progress / todo:

* tools for speed-up

* submission of needed patches to factory

* cross-compiler integration

Until the Build Service supports git natively (see the GSoC project) , here is what I use to track my changes locally:

#cat /usr/local/bin/osc  :

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/osc “$@”

if [ -e .osc/_files ]; then

if [ ! -d .git ] ; then  git init ; echo “.osc” > .gitignore ; echo “.gitignore” >> .gitignore ; fi
mydate=$(date)

git add `find -maxdepth 1 -type f | grep -v “.git”`
for i in $( git status | grep “deleted:” | cut -d” ” -f7 ) ; do
git rm $i;
done

git commit -a -m”$mydate”

fi

Today, the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter team will have the translation sessions for the special edition created yesterday.

Join us from 12:00 UTC to 15:00 UTC in #opensuse-newsletter on freenode. (Schedule)

Hi openSUSE community!

I’m glad my proposal was accepted and today I want to introduce myself and my GSoC project.

/me , thats Jan-Simon Möller and I’m just finishing my Diploma in electrical engineering at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. I’m coordinator of the openSUSE Weekly Newsletter and contribute also to the hamradio repository, the iFolder project and the openSUSE Build Service. See also my “People of openSUSE” interview.

My Project in short:  openSUSE@ARM
My aim during GSoC 2009 is to port first the base to the ARM platform. Then KIWI needs also some attention when it comes to imaging and after that the tools, Kernel and X11.

I’ll heavily use the capabilities of the openSUSE Build Service, which is now ready for ARM.

During the last few days, I’ve done many little preparations to get it all flying when GSoC coding period starts.

Stay tuned !

The openSUSE Build Service is an open and complete distribution development platform. It’s the infrastructure for a development of the openSUSE distributions. But this powerful tool can do much more! The upcoming version 1.5 will also have cross-build support and thus be able to build e.g. ARM packages on x86 hardware .

Maemo is the platform for mobile devices like the N810 and has been developed by Nokia in collaboration with many open source projects such as the Linux kernel, GNOME and many more. (more…)

Let’s extend the application to make it even more useful!

* add support for YaST-Repositories

* add Support for different architectures

* use always a random temporary directory

Now, it looks like this:

You can grab it out of my home: in the openSUSE Build Service (for openSUSE 11.0).

Start it with “repoviewer”, add the repository’s url, select the type, the architecture and hit “Go!” .
You can choose the architectures only for the “highest” type of the family as they list the “lower” types, too.
So to see “ppc” packages. use “ppc64″ in the combobox and later “ppc” in the “Arch” column.
For big repos (like factory) it takes some time to download and parse the metadata.

Also try in a console-window:
unset DISPLAY; repoviewer

thanks to libyui, that just works !
Update: You can access also local directories (like mounted CDs/DVDs).
Just use “file:///” and the full path ! E.g.: “file:///media/SU1100.001/”

Up to now 65.40% of the  votes have been cast.

So if you’re a member or franchise voter -> now it’s time to cast your vote !

Because of the power outage the deadline has been extended and ballots will close 1200UTC Saturday 25th October .

Here’s the link to users.opensuse.org .