Quoting Andy Green <andy(a)warmcat.com>:
On 12/01/10 18:37, Somebody in the thread at some point said:
Hi -
> 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.
Infrastructure evidently already exists to knock out armv5 packages.
> 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
Several years ago I made my own rpm-based cross-build system similar
to this. You meet packages like perl, which as part of its build
process created a "miniperl" that it then ran to complete the build
process. Except when you build cross, the miniperl executable is an
ARM executable on an x86_64 box and it can't complete the build
process.
Most packages are not that tough but there are still enough funnies
that instead of knocking bugs out in some awesome fast cross
environment, you are running around discovering and solving
cross-specific bugs.
yuck. :P
> 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).
qemu arm is a dead loss for mass build, it's a fraction of the speed
of native execution on even a weak arm.
> 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.
If it was the case that arm will never approach x86 speeds, then
cross is worth worrying about because it will solve years of speed
differential by a large effort now.
But that is not the case, fast arm native platforms are already here
and will only get faster in the future. Cross and arm emulation are
not the solution and won't become the solution either.
I was looking at today. Today the project has a handful of builders.
How does the project get on track to appear to be a viable solution,
rather then a secondary arch that is 2 releases behind to someone
unfamiliar with the project? What is the easiest way to get there
today?