Quoting Andy Green <a...@warmcat.com>: > On 11/30/10 19:49, Somebody in the thread at some point said: > > Hi - > >> I understand we probably will have logistic issues releasing v7 arch >> for F14 since it has already been released (for x86), I assume it >> isn't trivial to add compiler flags for the 13k packages in both F14 >> and rawhide(F15. That sounds like a lot work. It is easier to put them >> directly into rawhide rather then in both places so they are there >> moving forward (still a lot of work but it only needs to be done once >> and you probably can easily script it.) > > Compiler flags and so on are mainly handled by rpmbuild based on the > macros for the architecture it's building on. So it's not like > patching thousands of packages. > >> We could branch out a cortex or a v7 release, but that is more >> logistic issues, and honestly by dropping arm5tel support. I dont >> think we are dropping much hardware that people are actually >> interested in running Fedora on and especially by the F15 release. > > I am very interested in running Fedora on armv5tel as we can today. > >> Tablets, laptops, embedded servers would be more realistic, and > > There is a quite wide spread of arm hardware about, it is not going > to be the case that suddenly everything is Cortex. For example > these last days I have been using Arm Fedora on NXP LPC3250 which is > a new, cheap chip based on the ARM926EJ core which is armv5; Fedora > is working great on SD Card. The last thing I worked on uses Fedora > on an iMX31 CPU which is ARM1136 / armv6. > > If it makes a big difference to build for high end cortex > specifically, then I hope we're able to keep armv5 while the chips > are still current and being designed into things along the lines of > i386 / x86_64. > >> As far as actually moving forward... >> >> If it is possible to cross-compile RPMS, and get sane results, it > > I think trying to make Fedora build cross is a whole other issue. > > Building stuff cross is a trickier business than you might think. > Many packages with recent autotools can build cross OK, plus or > minus some magic needed to work with rpmbuild like that, but there > is no point doing all that work if there are fast ARM high-end > machines available that can build them native. Surely it's clear > that high end arm machines are clearly going to approach x86 kinds > of speed anyway in the next years reducing any pay back from the > effort of going cross.
I don't believe ARM is going to reach top end x86 speeds in the next couple of years. I think MIPS64 has a better chance. I do believe it can be a cost effective, energy efficient way to replace lower-end systems like desktops and can get some traction in the data centers as a replacement for low-end systems and caching type of servers. I don't disagree with a split, but what concerns me is we don't have enough resources to get F13-ARM out the door, much less two versions of the distro. We don't have enough people nor the hardware to pull it off. If you can cross-compile, and knock out 50% of the bugs out in a "pre-build" system before they hit the actual build system. It increases the overall speed of development. I am fully aware it isn't going to be simpler then using real hardware, but I was wondering if it would be simpler then trying to get qemu-arm with virtio and the plan9 layer working (i failed the first time). Distributing a VM "image" with all the build tools set up and everything configured is a lot simpler then setting up a full blown dev environment. _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
