Feature changed by: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) Feature #310070, revision 18 Title: openSUSE support for ARM openSUSE-11.4: New Priority Requester: Important Requested by: peter czanik (czanik) Developer: andrea florio (anubisg1) Description: As indicated by this [1] thread, and many earlier, there is demand for openSUSE ARM support. As discussed on the mailing list: - the build infrastructure is already there - there is a number of cheap and easily available existing ARM based devices (EFIKA MX [2], Sheeva Plug [3], Beagle Board [4], etc.) and many more are expected to arrive in the coming months - we need developers This last point is the most important, as creating an ARM port is more than just enabling ARM in the build service. Without enough developers this port can't be started, as there is a lot of work to do: - sometimes it is enough just to fix packaging errors (where only x86 is considered in the spec file) - often compiling on ARM needs some patching (either to find existing patches from other distributions or develop new ones) - the openSUSE (YaST, etc.) tools need to be made aware of ARM - testing on different target machines Please add your comment, if you are interested in the ARM port and also that how you could help this initiative! 1. http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-buildservice/2010-06/msg00293.html 2. http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika 3. http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx 4. http://beagleboard.org/ Discussion: #1: andrea florio (anubisg1) (2010-07-01 15:20:02) please consider me in! i am probably not yet a "developer" in the strict meaning of the word, but i guess i can really help that project. #2: Andreas Jaeger (a_jaeger) (2010-07-01 15:57:11) Let's move the feature to the next release and not do it for 11.3. #3: Robert Schweikert (rjschwei) (2010-07-01 16:38:14) I will help fix packages. #4: Cristian Rodríguez (elvigia) (2010-07-01 19:06:48) Im also interested on this port however, afaics the problem is: 1)access to real hardware that has enough resources to actually build the complete distro natively. I can actually pucharse one of those little things, but It wont be much useful for building packages, as it has too liltte RAM. any other alternatives available that does not require using cross-compilers ? #5: (sboyce) (2010-07-01 20:50:08) I have a Beagleboard and hope to get the Beagleboard XM when it is available, so I can help with testing. I would hope for a more straightforward approach than is currently available with Angstrom, Ubuntu or Fedora for ARM. #6: Jan-Simon Möller (dl9pf) (2010-07-02 14:46:58) @Christian: We don't need real hardware - we've emulation and cross- compilers in place. I can take care of these 2 and become mentor as i did the 11.2@arm during my GSoC. IMHO we need 1-2 ppl acting as coordinators/distro- maintainers/dispatchers - this doesn't involve that much coding - but should prevent packagers from getting swamped or stuck in a problem. Being the voice/contact/hub. Packagers/Package maintainers, of course. For most issues there's a patch - we just have to look around. And for the other 5% we can always ping our specialists. Its cool as you always see what you have achieved. I could imagine to care for the qemu/gcc/cross-compilers/base:build (the "core") - how much time is left to co-maintain the rest i can't tell. + #7: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2010-07-11 20:12:08) (reply to #6) + Been there, done that. I can tell stories of SPARC. Emulation is slow + -- if it exists at all. Cross-compilers are tiresome and don't help + beyond bootstrap, when ./configure depends on running some target code. + Real hardware is the deal to get things done in a timely manner, as + even a single machine takes time to build factory. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310070