Serious problems with Gentoo ARM

lekter · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 12

What is happening with ARM?

Doing emerge sync removes many references to it:
- /usr/portage/profiles/default-arm-1.4
- Keywords inside packages

We rely on this for Gentoo For Zaurus, and yes, we know that ARM is not a supported architecture. With our project, we can begin to support some packages.

Could you please restore the portage files needed for ARM?

By the way, thanks for this wonderful distro.
_________________
Fernando Monera Daroqui
fmonera at opensistemas dot com
http://www.opensistemas.com

ciaranm · Posted: Tue Mar 23, 2004 11:53 pm Post subject:

arm was pulled and probably won't be coming back any time soon.

darkeye · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 105

Kumba · Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:34 pm Post subject:

Alot of the ARM developers left with the Zynot fork, which effectively killed off the Gentoo/ARM port. ARM keywords have slowly been removed from the portage tree because the QA tool, repoman, got an upgrade in portage-2.0.50 that allowed it to do better dependency checking and making sure when a package was stabilized, all dependents of the package were also stablilized on a specific architecture.

Suffice to say, this new dependency check bumped into the stagnating ARM keywords, causing people using other archs to have problems making changes to the portage tree, so a collective decision was made to remove most, if not all, ARM keywords from the tree until as such a time until ARM can be developed on again and the relevant packages marked stable/unstable.

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

darkeye · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 105

I see. But it seems the Zynot site is pretty much abandoned, some links don't work, last entries in the forum date back at least half a year.

It seems we need to start from scratch then...

lekter · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 12

(I am the main developer of Gentoo For Zaurus)
We really don't want to fork Gentoo for ARM, but it is the only way we can have this project working. If we fork, I would like to be as close to real Gentoo as possible, until you decide to allow us (ARM users) to use the main portage.

I see the following (rough) roadmap. The work are measured in REAL time working, so it will be longer:
- setup a separate rsync mirror (I will provide one next week): 2-6 hours
- Some easy scripting magic to accept / modify official ebuilds to allow ARM: 5 days
- Reduction of february tree to have only real working packages: 2 days to many months (this will be the real interesting work)

Due to the reduced size of the community compared to Gentoo, I propose a more open development model, where almost everybody can submit ebuilds to the main tree, at least at the beginning.
_________________
Fernando Monera Daroqui
fmonera at opensistemas dot com
http://www.opensistemas.com

Kumba · Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2004 11:38 pm Post subject:

lekter: You might want to take a look at this thread on the gentoo-embedded mailing list, and consider some of the thoughts I traded with Akos. It might provide some insight onto what may be needed to get arm support in gentoo working again.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-embedded&m=108019982909990&w=2

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

darkeye · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 105

lekter · n00b Joined: 19 Sep 2003 Posts: 12

First, I will put the information post on all the "channels" on the wiki this weekend.

http://gentooforzaurus.opensistemas.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpWiki&file=index

We are organizing the development team. We are setting up two branches:

- Head: Independent tree close to Gentoo trying to start from the beginning as a standard Gentoo port. We have a more detailed description that will be on the wiki this weekend. Akos Maroy wants to be the leader of this branch.

- Stable: This branch will be a "scripting magic hack" branch to keep current tree compatible with ARM again. We will have things working again very fast here, but this is "dead work" once the Head branch is working. I will be the leader of this branch.

We will need help mainly on Head branch. This weekend we will have the HEAD rsync server and all the information to become a developer of the project.
_________________
Fernando Monera Daroqui
fmonera at opensistemas dot com
http://www.opensistemas.com