annotate www/news.html @ 879:4f7d2bfbc5fc

Release notes for 0.9.8.
author Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
date Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:34:06 -0600
parents f65196307da0
children 0da87d1ef528
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1 <b><h1>News</h1></b>
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2
879
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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3 <h2>November 7, 2009</h2>
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4 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.9.8.tar.bz2>Version 0.9.8</a> is out,
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5 based on hg commit 876. (If you want to see all the changes in this release,
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6 look at <a href=http://impactlinux.com/hg/firmware/shortlog/876>commits 810 through 876</a>.)</p>
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7
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8 <p.The current plan is to cut one more release at the end of the month, and
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9 then have the 1.0 release around new year's. This could be considered a
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10 1.0-pre1, if you like.</p>
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11
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12 <p>This release upgrades linux to 2.6.31.4 and busybox to 1.15.2.
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13 (The uClibc version is still 0.9.30.1, they haven't had a new release
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14 yet.)</p>
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15
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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16 <p>The old #firmware irc channel on freenode.net has been merged into #edev,
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17 so go there now to ask questions about this project. (A _lot_ of
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18 knowledgeable, helpful people hang there who can answer your embedded
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19 development questions.)</p>
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20
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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21 <h3><b>Bug tracker and roadmap</b></h3>
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22
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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23 <blockquote>
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24 <p>The <a href=http://redmine.impactlinux.com/projects/impact>new bug
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25 tracker</a> has a <a href=http://redmine.impactlinux.com/projects/impact/roadmap>roadmap</a>
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26 showing what we plan to implement for the next release or two.</p>
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27
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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28 <p>It's also a place to file bugs, athough sending them to the <a href=http://lists.impactlinux.com/listinfo.cgi/firmware-impactlinux.com>mailing list</a>
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29 is still the fastest way to get a fix.</p>
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30 </blockquote>
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31
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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32 <h3><b>New screenshots page</b></h3>
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33
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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34 <blockquote>
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35 <p><a href=screenshots>This page</a> lists every target, with
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36 a "screenshot" of the target's boot messages under qemu, and associated
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37 links to all the various prebuilt binaries for that target.</p>
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38 </blockquote>
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39
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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40 <h3><b>Fun with static linking</b></h3>
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41
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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42 <blockquote>
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43 <p>The cross-compiler-$ARCH tarballs are all compiled for i686 and
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44 statically linked against uClibc for maximum portability.</p>
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45
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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46 <p>The busybox binary in the root filesystem images is now built statically by
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47 default, providing a 20% speed improvement in ./configure times under qemu
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48 (due to the reduced page translation overhead). You can switch this back
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49 to dynamic with "BUILD_STATIC=none".</p>
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50
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51 <p>Static dropbear and strace binaries for each target are also available,
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52 built by the new sources/more/native-static-build.sh script.</p>
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53 </blockquote>
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54
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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55 <h3><b>System Image interface changes</b></h3>
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56
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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57 <blockquote>
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58 <p>The run-from-build.sh script used to set up a development environment
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59 out of the build directory, but didn't provide an easy way to do so based
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60 on downloaded tarballs. (You had to work out and provide extensive
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61 command line arguments to the run-emulator.sh script.) This has been
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62 fixed.</p>
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63
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64 <p>The run-emulator.sh script in each system interface tarball is now much
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65 simpler. It now looks for distccd and $ARCH-cc in its $PATH, and sets up
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66 distcc acceleration automatically if it finds them. (It announces whether
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67 or not it has managed to do so, and init.sh announces whether or not it
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68 thinks it has distcc acceleration enabled just before launching a command
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69 prompt.) So setting up the distcc accelerator should be less of a pain.</p>
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70
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71 <p>Also, run-emulator.sh no longer takes any command line arguments. Instead
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72 the environment variable $HDB indicates a /dev/hdb disk image to mount on
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73 /home, $HDBMEGS specifies the size of a (sparse ext2) HDB image to create if
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74 it doesn't already exist, and QEMU_MEMORY indicates how many megabytes of
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75 physical memory the emulator should allocate for the virtual system.</p>
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76
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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77 <p>Each system-image also provides a simple wrapper dev-environment.sh
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78 which calls run-emulator.sh with HDBMEGS=2048, HDB=hdb.img, and
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79 QEMU_MEMORY=256. (These are the values run-from-build.sh used to provide,
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80 and give a reasonable build environment with 256 megs of physical memory
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81 and 2 gigabytes of writeable /home space.) The run-from-build.sh script
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82 itself now merely adds the specified build/cross-compiler-$ARCH directory
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83 to the $PATH, changes directory to the appropriate build/system-image-$ARCH,
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84 and calls ./dev-environment.sh. It's 3 lines.</p>
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85
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86 <p>The system images can now also automatically mount a third disk image
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87 ($HDC, specifying an /dev/hdc image to mount onto the /mnt directory), and if
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88 that filesystem contains an executable "init" program in its root directory
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89 the sbin/init.sh script will run that instead of launching a command prompt.</p>
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90
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91 <p>The new native-static-build.sh uses this HDC capability to automatically
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92 run some native package builds without having to drive the build through
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93 /dev/console via a wrapper script (the way smoketest.sh does). See
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94 sources/more/setup-native-static-build.sh for the script which generates
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95 the hdc.sqf image for this.</p>
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96
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97 <p>Note that some targets (such as sh4 and powerpc) don't yet support /dev/hdc
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98 due to QEMU board emulation limitations.</p>
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99 </blockquote>
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100
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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101 <h3><b>Build interface changes</b></h3>
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102
4f7d2bfbc5fc Release notes for 0.9.8.
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103 <blockquote>
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104 <p>The new "sources/more" directory contains scripts the end user can
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105 call, but which aren't important enough to clutter up the top level
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106 directory with. The buildall.sh and smoketest-all.sh scripts moved there,
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107 as did the cronjob.sh used to build the nightly snapshots.</p>
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108
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109 <p>The new sources/more/native-static-build.sh natively compiles dropbear and
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110 strace under the emulator, and copies them out to the host through the virtual
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111 network (into the build/cron-temp directory) using busybox ftpd on the host.
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112 This provides an example of how to use the new HDC /mnt/init functionality
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113 to perform automatic builds under the emulator, and copy the results out
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114 through the network. It uses the new sources/timeout.sh wrapper to detect
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115 hung builds (defined as builds that haven't produced a line of output within
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116 a given number of seconds).</p>
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117
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118 <p>The new BINARY_PACKAGE_TARBALLS variable (in the file "config") tells
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119 the build to create a separate tarball of the binaries produced building
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120 each package. (These more granular tarballs aren't shipped yet, but may
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121 be in a future release.)</p>
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122
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123 <p>The new SKIP_STRIP variable tells the build not to strip binaries.
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124 (Add in CFLAGS=-g for enormous binaries full of debug info.)</p>
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125 </blockquote>
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126
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127 <h3><b>Target upgrades</b></h3>
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128
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129 <blockquote>
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130 <p>Powerpc and sh4 should now work fine with stock qemu 0.11.0.</p>
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131
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132 <p>The arm platform now has an armv4tl target. This is a little-endian armv4
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133 eabi, for armv4 chips offering the "thumb" extension which eabi requires.
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134 (The plain armv4l target is still oabi. The oabi/eabi thing is different
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135 binary ABIs, a bit like Linux vs BSD binaries or aout vs elf. The eabi
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136 standard is the new one, but some of the older arm hardware can't support
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137 it. This takes it down as far as it can go.)</p>
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138 </blockquote>
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139
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140 <h3><b>Infrastructure</b></h3>
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141
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142 <blockquote>
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143 <p>Behind the scenes, some extensive work is going on to simplify the
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144 build scripts. (The documentation's fallen a bit behind reality here,
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145 but should be back up to date next release.)</p>
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146
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147 <p>The uClibc miniconfigs are now automatically generated, with the
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148 bulk of the config living in sources/baseconfig-uClibc and the few
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149 target specific lines being appended from the UCLIBC_CONFIG variable
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150 defined in the target's settings file.</p>
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151
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152 <p>The other big change is factoring out lots of common code, moving it into
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153 the sources/sections directory, so things like the uClibc, busybox, and
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154 toolchain builds now live in one place and are called from the various
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155 other scripts that need them. (This may eventually allow alternate build
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156 scripts for these packages, potentially swapping out glibc for uClibc, or
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157 llvm/clang for gcc. In the meantime, it eliminates a lot of redundant code.)</p>
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158
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159 <p>This required lots of small cleanups, such as making the scripts now
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160 consistently use the $STAGE_DIR variable for their output directory.
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161 Some other cleanups were primarily cosmetic, such as moving the extracted
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162 tarball cache directory from build/sources to build/packages. (Tarballs
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163 live in packages, extracted tarballs live in build/packages.)</p>
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164
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165 <p>The root filesystem now contains simple /etc/passwd and /etc/group files,
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166 because dropbear won't work without them (not even to ssh out).</p>
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167
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168 <p>Several small bugfixes (ccwrap no longer segfaults if $PATH isn't
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169 exported, /etc/resolv.conf doesn't get overwritten unnecessarily by init.sh,
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170 etc).</p>
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171 </blockquote>
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172
809
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173 <h2>August 20, 2009</h2>
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174 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.9.7.tar.bz2>Version 0.9.7</a> is out, a little
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175 over a month and a half late. It's a larger update than usual, so the
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176 release notes are a bit long.</p>
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177
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178 <p>This release is based on
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179 <a href=http://impactlinux.com/hg/firmware/log/807>mercurial version 807</a>
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180 of the build scripts,
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181 and includes <b>Linux 2.6.30.4</b> and <b>BusyBox 1.14.3</b>.
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182 No new uClibc release is out since last time.</p>
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183
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184 <p>Lots of little bugs got fixed. For example, this release should build on
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185 Fedora 11 (and any other platform that hasn't got "which" installed by
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186 default), and now supports distcc and ccache on the host (and will use them
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187 automatically if they are installed).</p>
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188
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189 <h3><b>Changes to build stages: new root-filesystem, cross-static, and
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190 native-compiler tarballs, upgraded buildall.sh and smoketest-all.sh.</b></h3>
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191
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192 <blockquote>
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193 <p>The old "mini-native" stage has been renamed "root-filesystem"
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194 (the same way package-mini-native became system-image last release). The
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195 script names (and resulting tarballs) now indicate what each stage makes.
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196 So build.sh calls host-tools.sh, cross-compiler.sh, root-filesystem.sh,
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197 and system-image.sh, in that order.</p>
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198
879
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199 <p>The old build-static-toolchains.sh script is gone, with its functionality
809
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200 integrated into buildall.sh (which now builds i686 hosted static toolchains
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201 for each target by default). This is implemented by two new environment
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202 variables triggering optional behavior: STATIC_CROSS_COMPILER_HOST
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203 and BUILD_STATIC_NATIVE_COMPILER.</p>
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204
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205 <p>Setting STATIC_CROSS_COMPILER_HOST to an architecture name creates a
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206 cross compiler statically linked to run on that host (via a technique
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207 known as canadian cross compile). For example, the invocation:</p>
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208
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209 <blockquote>
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210 <p>BUILD_CROSS_COMPILER_HOST=i686 ./build.sh armv4l</P>
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211 </blockquote>
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212
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213 <p>Would create a tarball called "cross-static-armv4l.tar.bz2" which was
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214 built to run on an i686 host, and was statically linked (against uClibc)
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215 on that host to be distribution independent.</p>
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216
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217 <p>Setting BUILD_STATIC_NATIVE_COMPILER to any non-empty value creates a
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218 native compiler for the target (packaged as native-compiler-$ARCH.tar.bz2),
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219 which is statically linked against uClibc so it can be extracted and run on
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220 just about any system of the appropriate type. (So if you can get a Linux
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221 shell prompt and have enough storage and memory, you should be able to
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222 compile stuff.)</p>
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223
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224 <p>The upgraded smoketest-all.sh script runs smoketest.sh on each
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225 target built. (The smoketest.sh script attempts to compile and run "hello
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226 world" natively within a system image under qemu, and indicates whether or
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227 not it worked via "pass" or "fail".) Note that smoketest-all.sh now
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228 autodetects which targets have been built (have system images in the build
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229 directory), and smoketest.sh times out after 60 seconds so targets that hang
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230 will return failure eventually.</p>
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231
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232 </blockquote>
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233
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234 <h3><b>Squashfs 4.0 now the default system image type</b></h3>
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235
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236 <blockquote>
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237 <p>The root filesystem image type is now squashfs by default. (To change it set
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238 SYSIMAGE_TYPE to ext2 or initramfs, either in your environment or the file
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239 "configure".)</p>
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240
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241 <p>This involved upgrading the userspace squashfs support package
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242 to the version 4.0 supported by the upstream kernel, and numerous small fixes
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243 to work with a read-only root filesystem (with writeable spaced mounted on
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244 /home and /tmp).</p>
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245 </blockquote>
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246
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247 <h3><b>Target upgrades</b></h3>
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248 <blockquote>
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249 <h3><b>ARM upgrades</b></h3>
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250
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251 <blockquote>
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252 <p>Lots of work on the arm targets, with the addition of a new armv6l target
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253 and conversion of the armv5l target to
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254 <a href=http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Articles/Why-ARMs-EABI-matters/>ARM EABI</a> (which used to be documented <a href=http://www.arm.com/products/DevTools/ABI.html>here</a>,
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255 but ARM screwed up its website and now you have to go
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256 <a href=http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.subset.swdev.abi/index.html>here</a>). The armv4l target still provides an ARM v4
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257 little endian soft float OABI target (which is "the i386 of ARM", meaning it
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258 should run on just about any arm hardware, if a bit slowly). A new
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259 armv4be target is the same as armv4l except big endian.</p>
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260
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261 <p>A new hw-tct-hammer target supports the <a href=http://www.tincantools.com/product.php?productid=16143>Tin Can Tools hammer/nail board</a>.</p>
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262 </blockquote>
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263
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264 <h3><b>Updated sparc support, almost works now. (uClibc for sparc still sucks.)</b></h3>
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265
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266 <blockquote>
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267 <p>The sparc target has also been upgraded to the point where it now gives
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268 a shell prompt. (And immediately dies with a bus error or a hang if you try
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269 to do anything, because uClibc for sparc still doesn't work. The "upgrade"
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270 consisted of statically linking everything because uClibc's dynamic loader
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271 doesn't work for sparc.)</p>
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272 </blockquote>
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273
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274 <h3><b>PowerPC remains fiddly due to QEMU issues, new powerpc-440fp target</b></h3>
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275
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276 <blockquote>
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277 <p>PowerPC support in QEMU is
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278 <a href=http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-07/msg01007.html>officially unstable</a>, so although FWL's powerpc target hasn't significantly
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279 changed from last release, the version of QEMU in source control no longer
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280 runs it (nor the binary powerpc system images released with FWL 0.9.6) and
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281 QEMU's developers do not consider this a regression. While we search for a new
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282 Linux kernel .config that matches QEMU's current expectations (and await a
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283 release considered "stable"), note that setting HOST_BUILD_EXTRA=1 before
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284 running host-tools.sh will build a version of qemu that does run powerpc and
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285 put it in build/host where run-from-build.sh can find it. (Note also that
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286 building qemu from source still takes significantly longer than the rest of the
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287 host-tools.sh stage combined.)</p>
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288
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289 <p>A new powerpc-440fp target produces code for the powerpc 440 with hardware
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290 floating point. (Theoretically QEMU's "bamboo" board emulation should
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291 run this, but QEMU doesn't emulate a 440 processor yet. We compromise by
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292 running a ppc440 filesystem under qemu's power mac emulation, to take
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293 advantage of the ppc440 instruction set being almost a subset of full powerpc.
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294 This gets us a shell prompt, but throws illegal instruction errors if you
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295 try to do anything fancy.)</p>
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296
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297 <p>(Note that powerpc-440fp is not a hw-target for powerpc, it's a different
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298 processor instruction set like i586 vs i686. Alas, one that qemu doesn't
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299 properly emulate yet.)</p>
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300
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301 </blockquote>
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302
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303 </blockquote>
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304
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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305 <h3><b>Now using last GPLv2 release of GCC, and future plans</b></h3>
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306
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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307 <blockquote>
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308 <p>The upgrade to <b>gcc 4.2.1</b> gives us
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309 <a href=http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-announce/2007/msg00003.html>the last
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310 GPLv2 licensed version of gcc</a> (thus avoiding
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311 <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/343608/>various problems</a>).
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312 <a href=http://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=4932>Make 3.81</a>
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313 was already the last GPLv2 release of that project.</p>
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314
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315 <p>Note that <b>bash 2.05b</b> is still intentionally ancient (to avoid the
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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316 bloat of 3.x), and may be replaced with busybox ash as the default FWL shell
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317 in a future release. Similarly, although <b>binutils 2.17</b> was the last
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318 GPLv2 version from the FSF, an upgrade to
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319 <a href=http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/devel/binutils/release.binutils-2.18.50.0.1>the
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parents: 694
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320 last GPLv2 release of Red Hat's binutils fork, 2.17.5.0.17</a> is under
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321 consideration for a future release. But mostly the GNU compiler toolchain
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322 has been upgraded as far as possible for the forseeable future, either because
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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323 new versions provide no significant benefits or because they're not available
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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324 under a license compatible with the Linux kernel's.</p>
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parents: 694
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325
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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326 <p>Future upgrades to these packages will either be via individual patches
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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327 (maintaining GPLv2 license) or by investigating alternative non-FSF
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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328 packages such as OpenBSD's <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/255558>PCC</a> or
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parents: 694
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329 Apple's <a href=http://llvm.org>LLVM</a>. In preparation for support of
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330 alternate compilers, the build scripts have moved from using "gcc" to the
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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331 more generic "cc" for the compiler name wherever possible, but currently no
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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332 drop-in replacement compiler is available.</p>
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333
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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334 </blockquote>
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335
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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parents: 694
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336 <h3><b>Implementation details</b></h3>
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337
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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338 <blockquote>
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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diff changeset
339 <p>Each target configuration renamed "details" to "settings", and added
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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340 a "description". (This makes Gentoo From Scratch's kconfig easier.)</p>
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341
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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342 <p>The download.sh stage now populates a "packages" directory instead of
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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343 "sources/packages", meaning that everything in the sources directory now
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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344 comes from the FWL source tarball. To do the equivalent of "make clean"
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345 you can "rm -rf build", and to do a "make distclean" you can
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346 "rm -rf packages build".</p>
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347
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348 <p>The build no longer deletes the alt-* tarballs when UNSTABLE isn't
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349 set, you must do that by hand if you want an updated alt- version of a
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350 package. The packages/MANIFEST file creation can now use the extended
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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351 tarball information to detect git version numbers.</p>
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352
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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353 <p>The === bars now show the current stage name and architecture each
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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354 package is being built for. (Pipe the build output to grep "^===" to see
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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355 just the start of each new package build.) The same information is sent
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356 to the title bar of your xterm, export NO_TITLE_BAR=1 if you don't want the
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357 build to update the title bar.</p>
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358
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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parents: 694
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359 <p>The BUILD_STATIC option now applies to all packages built in
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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360 root-filesystem.sh, and can be set from a target configuration's settings file
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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361 (as sparc is now doing).</p>
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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362
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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363 <p>The BUILD_VERBOSE option passes V=1 to the linux, busybox, and uClibc
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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364 builds that otherwise sanitize their output.</p>
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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365
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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366 <p>You can now set NATIVE_TOOLCHAIN=only to build just the compiler
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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367 and not the other parts (busybox, make, toybox, bash...) This is used
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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368 by the canadian cross steps in build.sh to create static cross and native
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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diff changeset
369 compilers.</p>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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370
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
diff changeset
371 <p>This release broke up scripts/include.sh so that script just
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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372 sets lots of environment variables, and now includes scripts/functions.sh
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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373 to define shell functions. The architecture setup (reading architecture
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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374 files and creating temporary directories and such) is now done via the
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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375 "read_arch_dir $ARCH" shell function, so merely including sources/include.sh
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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376 should no longer have significant side effects. Similarly, setupfor now
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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377 has an EXTRACT_ONLY environment variable instead of depending on a blank
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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378 $ARCH (which host-tools.sh has, despite wanting to snapshot source so it can
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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379 build stuff).</p>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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parents: 694
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380
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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381 <p>Various fixes to make parallel builds work better. (So it neither leaves
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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382 background processes running nor kills the parent shell and closes your
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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383 xterm when you hit ctrl-c.) The new "killtree" shell function,
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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384 which kills a process and all its children and grandchildren recursively with
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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385 pgrep. We also build our own sources/toys/mysetsid.c program with the host
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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386 compiler (because the normal command line "setsid" doesn't also do a tcsetpgrp
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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387 on stdin so signal handling isn't forwarded to the new session). This should
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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388 more reliably allow ctrl-c to exit smoketest.sh and system-image.sh and such,
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389 and let FORK=1 ./buildall.sh stop all its background processes when
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Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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390 interrupted. (Note that smoketest-all.sh also honors FORK=1.)</p>
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391
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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392 <p>The logs from buildall.sh now live in build/logs.</p>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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393
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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394 <p>The new config option ROOT_NODIRS avoids creating the normal set of empty
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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395 directories in the new root filesystem. (The old /tools support went
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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396 away, but a BUILD_STATIC ROOT_NODIRS build can be extracted into /tools
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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397 and used from there. Then either symlink "/lib" to "/tools/lib" or "export
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398 UCLIBC_DYNAMIC_LINKER=/tools/lib/ld-uClibc.so.0" to add more stuff to
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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399 /tools natively.)</p>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
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400
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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401 <p>The compiler wrapper (sources/toys/ccwrap.c) can now use
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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402 architecture-specific WRAPPER_TOPDIR values. (I.E. armv4l-cc could
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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403 "export armv4l_WRAPPER_TOPDIR=/path/to/directory".) This makes
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
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404 canadian cross compiles a lot easier.</p>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 694
diff changeset
405 </blockquote>
d326c68aa747 Update website and READMEs.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
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406
694
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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407 <h2>April 2, 2009</h2>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
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parents: 543
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408 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.9.6.tar.bz2>Version 0.9.6</a> includes
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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409 Linux 2.6.29 and uClibc 0.9.30.1, now with support for sh4 and upgraded powerpc
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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410 support.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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411
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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412 <p>The big news is the <a href=http://impactlinux.com/code/gfs/>Gentoo
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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413 From Scratch</a> project, which extends a FWL system image into a Gentoo
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
414 Stage 1 environment, building natively inside qemu.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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415
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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416 <p>The <a href=documentation.html>documentation</a> has been extensively
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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417 rewritten (but needs more). The source now contains a README and each image
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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418 has a usr/src/MANIFEST file listing the packages it built from.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
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419
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
420 <p>The cross and native toolchains now include ldd, readelf, and
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
421 ldconfig. Added support for hardware targets (an unfinished example
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
422 of which is hw-wrt610n) that use the same cross compiler and system
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
423 image as a qemu platform, but build/package a different kernel to boot
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
424 on actual hardware.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
425
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
426 <p>Several new build options:</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
427 <ul>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
428 <li><p><b>$SYSIMAGE_TYPE</b> defaults to "ext2" but can now
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
429 produce and boot "initramfs" images as well. (And squashfs, but that doesn't
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
430 work yet due to missing features in squashfs tools version 3.4.)</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
431 <li><p>Setting <b>$HOST_BUILD_EXTRA</b> compiles qemu 0.10.1 in host-tools.sh.
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
432 You currently need to do this to run sh4 or powerpc, 0.10.1 has some bugs
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
433 needing patches. Not on by default because it takes a _long_ time.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
434 <li><p><b>$NO_CLEANUP</b> keeps source around after builds for debugging purposes.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
435 <li><p><b>$SYSIMAGE_HDA_MEGS</b> lets you control the size of the ext2 system images.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
436 <li><p><b>$SNAPSHOT_SYMLINK</b> lets the extracted source live on a different
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
437 filesystem than the build happens on. (Once the updated squashfs userspace
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
438 tools ship, build-static-toolchains.sh may be updated to use this.)</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
439 <li><p><b>$CROSS_SMOKE_TEST</b> use qemu application emulation to test run hello
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
440 world program at the end of the cross compiler build stage.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
441 <li><p><b>$SKIP_STAGE_TARBALLS</b> don't create tarballs of each stage,
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
442 just populate the directories.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
443 <li><p><b>$NATIVE_RETROFIT_CXX</b> retroactively add uClibc++ to the cross
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
444 compiler tarball during the native build stage.</p></li>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
445 </ul>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
446
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
447 <p>The run-emulator.sh scripts of system images have several new options,
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
448 do "./run-emulator.sh --help" for a list. Takes several environment
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
449 variables such as $QEMU_EXTRA and $KERNEL_EXTRA. Root filesystems can
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
450 now run in read only mode with "KERNEL_EXTRA=ro".</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
451
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
452 <p>Lots of build infrastructure upgrades. The build stages have been
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
453 reorganized somewhat (most noticeably package-mini-native.sh is now called
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
454 system-image.sh). The "sources/packages" directory has moved up a
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
455 directory (to separate repository files from stuff downloaded at runtime).
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
456 Upgrades to the cc wrapper and the USE_UNSTABLE infrastructure. Better
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
457 stripping of the cross compilers and system images, so everything's a bit
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
458 smaller. The mirror list now lives in download.sh. New buildall.sh is a
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
459 wrapper around build.sh. New build-static-toolchains.sh builds them under
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
460 qemu; set FORK=1 to build them in paralell just like buildall.sh. The
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
461 ext2 system images are now built at a small size with genext2fs and
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
462 then expanded with resize2fs (because genext2fs slows down exponentially
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
463 as size increases; this means e2fsprogs is built in host-tools.sh now).
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
464 Distcc has been upgraded, and should work more reliably now.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
465
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
466 <p>Too many little bug fixes to list.</p>
55a526672f43 Announce 0.9.6 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 543
diff changeset
467
543
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
468 <h2>December 16, 2008</h2>
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
469 <p>The mailing list moved to firmware at impactlinux.com. The link in
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
470 the nav bar on the left has changed, but the
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
471 <a href=http://www2.them.com:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firmware>old
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
472 archives</a> are still there for the moment.</p>
e85e59bd76aa News entry about new mailing list.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 536
diff changeset
473
523
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
474 <h2>December 3, 2008</h2>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
475 <p>After several false starts (I.E. last minute bugs, yes I test this thing
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
476 before shipping it),
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
477 <a href=downloads/firmware-0.9.5.tar.bz2>Version 0.9.5</a> is out, inching
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
478 towards a 1.0 release. Lots of new work this time.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
479
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
480 <p>The biggest news is uClibc 0.9.30 and uClibc++ 0.2.2. The native toolchain
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
481 now supports C++, hooked up to distcc and everything.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
482
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
483 <p>The <a href=documentation.html>documentation</a> has been extensively
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
484 rewritten. (There's always more to do, but most of it isn't horribly out
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
485 of date anymore.)</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
486
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
487 <p>The packaging stage now uses genext2fs instead of User Mode Linux, so
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
488 the most brittle part of the build has been removed. FWL can now fully
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
489 rebuild itself under itself, all the way through the packaging stage.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
490
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
491 <p>My personal website's getting a touch overwhelmed, so a higher bandwidth
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
492 site is now available at
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
493 <a href=http://impactlinux.com/fwl>impactlinux.com</a>. This should become
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
494 the new primary website going forward.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
495
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
496 <p>BusyBox has also been upgraded (to 1.13.0), and the new USE_UNSTABLE
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
497 infrastructure allows test versions of any package to be downloaded and built
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
498 without forking the build scripts, so future package upgrades can be dealt
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
499 with as side projects without blocking other important work.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
500
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
501 <p>The packaging stage now uses genext2fs instead of User Mode Linux, so
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
502 the most brittle part of the build has been removed. FWL can now fully
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
503 rebuild itself under itself, all the way through the packaging stage.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
504
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
505 <p>The old forkbomb script has been replaced with sources/build-all-targets.sh.
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
506 with an argument --fork to build all targets in parallel, and "--fork 3"
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
507 to limit the parallelism. This script can run from a cron job, producing
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
508 a "buildall" directory with tarballs, compressed logs, and a README file
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
509 listing the version of each package. The environment variable USE_STATIC_HOST
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
510 specifies an $ARCH to create statically linked cross compilers
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
511 for. (The build will then try to use them for the later stages,
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
512 and won't get far if you specify an arch that can't run on the host.)</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
513
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
514 <p>The include.sh script has been broken up, with a new sources/functions.sh
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
515 containing shell functions (like download, setupfor, and cleanup) and
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
516 a new "config" setting the user-editable environment variables that control
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
517 the build. Several of these variables have been renamed and their number has
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
518 grown. You can now specify the colors for each build stage using the variables
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
519 at the end of config.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
520
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
521 <p>Building mini-native in a Linux From Scratch style /tools directory is
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
522 no longer the default. Instead set NATIVE_TOOLSDIR=1 if you want that
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
523 kind of layout instead of a more conventional layout. (Similarly,
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
524 NATIVE_TOOLCHAIN=1 now enables the native toolchain, but that variable
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
525 defaults to enabled in config.)</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
526
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
527 <p>See the <a href=documentation.html>docs</a> for details.</p>
f2b7db2e4315 Announce 0.9.5 release.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents: 388
diff changeset
528
388
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
529 <h2>August 6, 2008</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
530 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.9.0.tar.bz2>Version 0.9.0</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
531 (<a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware/shortlog/378>changeset 378</a>)
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
532 and can rebuild itself under itself. (The packaging step still requires User
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
533 Mode Linux to create ext2 images, which only works on x86 and x86-64 hosts.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
534 The next release should replace that with something more portable.)
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
535 The root filesystem is now based on BusyBox 1.11.1 (plus a few bug fixes).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
536
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
537 <p>The prebuilt binary images have been moved into their own
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
538 <a href=downloads/binaries>binaries</a> directory.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
539 The prebuilt binary <a href=downloads/binaries/cross-compiler>cross
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
540 compilers</a> are statically linked against uClibc for better portability.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
541 Updated the <a href=downloads/README>README</a> to better describe the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
542 contents of the <a href=downloads/binaries/system-image>system-image
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
543 tarballs</a>.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
544
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
545 <p>The forkbomb.sh script can now take a number of parallel targets to
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
546 launch, for example "./forkbomb.sh --fork 3". (The resulting display is kind
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
547 of horrible but the out-$ARCH.txt files are still legible.) Leaving off the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
548 number still builds all targets in parallel, with the original display.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
549
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
550 <p>The include.sh script was reorganized so that interesting environment
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
551 variables the user might want to export for themselves are set near the top
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
552 of the script. Currently this includes:</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
553
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
554 <ul>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
555 <li><p><b>BUILD_SHORT</b> - Makes the mini-native.sh stage skip building
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
556 development tools. The resulting mini-native root filesystem contains uClibc
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
557 and busybox, but nothing else. (Export "BUILD_SHORT=headers" to put back the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
558 toolchain headers for use by another compiler, such as tinycc.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
559
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
560 <li><p><b>BUILD_STATIC</b> - Tell cross-compiler.sh to create static
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
561 binaries, for a more portable cross compiler toolchain. (If you want them
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
562 linked against uClibc, build a mini-native for your host, chroot into it, and
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
563 then rebuild under that.)</li>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
564
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
565 <li><p><b>PREFERRED_MIRROR</b> - Tell download.sh to fetch packages from a
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
566 non-default location (falling back to the standard mirror list if it can't get
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
567 one from there).</p></li>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
568
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
569 <li><p><b>RECORD_COMMANDS</b> - Record a list of all command lines used during
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
570 each build stage log files named "cmdlines.$STAGE.$PACKAGE" under the build
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
571 directory. Each file can be turned into a list of the command names used via
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
572 "awk '{print $1}' build/cmdlines* | sort -u". The script
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
573 sources/toys/report_recorded_commands.sh gives a report of all commands
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
574 used by each package after a call to "RECORD_COMMANDS=1 ./forkbomb.sh".
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
575 (This is an easy way to find out exactly what environmental dependencies a
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
576 package needs to build, or at least what it uses out of $PATH).</p></li>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
577 </ul>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
578
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
579 <p>Updated documentation is in progress...</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
580
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
581 <h2>June 6, 2008</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
582 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.4.0.tar.bz2>Version 0.4.0</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
583 (<a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware/shortlog/345>changeset 345</a>),
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
584 with kernel 2.6.25.4 and the "distcc trick" working out of the box.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
585
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
586 <p>The distcc trick accelerates a native build by calling out to the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
587 cross compiler. To use it, download the appropriate cross-compiler-$ARCH and
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
588 system-image-$ARCH tarballs, run the "run-with-distcc.sh" from the system image
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
589 directory with the path to the cross compiler directory as its first argument.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
590 (You need to have distcc installed on the host system.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
591
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
592 <p>After building from source, the cross-compiler and system-image directories
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
593 remain in the build directory. The "emulator-build.sh" runs these with
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
594 distcc acceration set up. The script "smoketest.sh" is a wrapper
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
595 around emulator-build.sh which feeds a script into qemu's stdin to compile
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
596 and run a multi-threaded "hello world" under the emulator, using distcc and
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
597 the cross compiler.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
598
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
599 <p>If smoketest.sh works for a platform, it means a lot of stuff worked to get
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
600 that far. The cross compiler worked to build the system, and the emulated
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
601 system booted so QEMU, the uClibc config, and the kernel config agreed.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
602 The emulated system has a working virtual hard drive and serial port, and for
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
603 distcc to work it has a working virtual network connection. Running "make"
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
604 would also require a working realtime clock.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
605
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
606 <p>The seven commands missing in order to run the FWL build under itself
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
607 are bzip2, sort, diff, wget, install, od, and find. (The busybox versions,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
608 where available, had a bug, and they're not in toybox yet.) I'm trying to
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
609 get those in for the next release in September.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
610
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
611 <p>Sorry I missed a release back in April. Shouldn't happen again.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
612
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
613 <h2>January 29, 2008</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
614 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.3.1.tar.bz2>Version 0.3.1</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
615 (<a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware/shortlog/275>changeset 275</a>), with
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
616 kernel 2.6.24. The <a href=downloads/images>images</a>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
617 are now tarballs each containing the ext2, zImage, and run script files.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
618 The run scripts now run qemu-setup.sh by default so /proc, /sys, /dev
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
619 and the virtual network are initialized, and the default shell is busybox
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
620 ash (so cursor keys and history work).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
621
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
622 <p>Sparc is still broken (tracked it down to a dynamic linking bug, I think,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
623 haven't fixed it yet) and m68k is failing to build with an internal compiler
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
624 error (next release I should upgrade the compiler). All the other targets
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
625 have a working virtual network, and all but powerpc exit qemu when you
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
626 exit the PID 1 command shell.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
627
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
628 <p>Building on an x86-64 host< should no longer be insanely slow (the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
629 gcc-min-heapsize arguments that allow 32-bit hosts to build in
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
630 128 megs of ram do very impolite things to 64-bit hosts), and the resulting
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
631 x86-64 cross compiler should now be properly relocatable.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
632
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
633 <p>Better build dependency tracking: the host-tools script is now
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
634 populating a single directory with all the commands needed by the build, and
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
635 restricting $PATH to that directory (so it can't accidentally call any
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
636 commands that aren't explicitly listed). It's building toybox and busybox to
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
637 provide most of these commands (the remaining ones are listed towards the end
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
638 of include.sh), and creating symlinks to the remaining ones out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
639 of the original $PATH. This allows it to build on a wider range of host
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
640 distributions.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
641
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
642 <h2>November 2, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
643 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.3.0.tar.bz2>Version 0.3.0</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
644 (changeset 242), with kernel 2.6.23. PowerPC finally works under
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
645 qemu (network and everything), and it's building a m68k target
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
646 (although I have no emulator to run that). That means there are
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
647 ten targets, of which eight run under qemu. (Sparc is still
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
648 broken, let me know if anybody actually cares.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
649
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
650 <p>The new "./forkbomb.sh --fork" script builds all the targets in
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
651 parallel, or use --nofork if you haven't got the memory for that
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
652 (and --watch to watch and existing build if you ctrl-c out of
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
653 the display before it's done).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
654
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
655 <p>The build is now smarter about extracting only one copy of the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
656 source code (in build/sources) and re-using it for multiple builds,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
657 building out of tree (via cp -rs to create a tree full of symlinks
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
658 so the package doesn't need native out-of-tree support).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
659
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
660 <h2>September 2, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
661 <p>Added <a href=new_platform.html>a porting guide</a>. I'm working on
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
662 m68k, ppc, big endian arm, and maybe blackfin targets for the next release,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
663 and thought other people might be interested in the process. (The vast
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
664 majority of it is fiddly debugging. These are the other steps.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
665
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
666 <h2>June 27, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
667 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.2.2.tar.bz2>Version 0.2.2</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
668 (changeset 185). Using uClibc 0.9.29 release, several small bugfixes,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
669 new mips big-endian config, actually work when /bin/sh->dash (mostly
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
670 by explicitly saying /bin/bash everywhere), automatically detect
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
671 the number of CPUs in the machine to feed -j to make, and better
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
672 diagnostic output.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
673
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
674 <h2>April 9, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
675 <p><a href=downloads/firmware-0.2.1.tar.bz2>Version 0.2.1</a> is out
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
676 (changeset 156). Significant upgrades to armv4l: the native compiler works
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
677 now, and it's using soft-float. Added armv5l and i586 targets to show how
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
678 to do that kind of variant. Added preliminary powerpc support (although
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
679 qemu can't run it yet). Reorganized the download directory and rewrote
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
680 the <a href=downloads/README>README</a>. Added squashfs back (the kernel
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
681 supports it, but it's not using it yet). Moved uClibc to miniconfig.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
682 (Yes, the patch for this is huge, and yes I need to push it all upstream into
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
683 the Linux kernel. On the bright side, this one builds on a host that doesn't
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
684 have curses installed.) Stopped trying to build qemu (at least until they
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
685 get the gcc 3.x dependencies cleaned out), now just warn if it's not there
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
686 (so far the build only uses it to sanity-test the cross compiler, which is
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
687 now skipped automatically if it's not there).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
688
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
689 <p>I note that some versions of Ubuntu (Edgy and up) are pushing a political
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
690 agenda. They install bash, but point /bin/sh to dash instead. (So why
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
691 install bash if you're not going to use it?) This breaks all sorts of things,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
692 and if somebody can tell me how to force make to run "/bin/bash" instead of
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
693 "/bin/sh", I'll consider trying to deal with the mess. Until then, I suggest
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
694 "rm /bin/sh; ln -s bash /bin/sh" to get a working system. (I'm no fan of
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
695 bash, but dash is just broken.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
696
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
697 <p>(Those of you who use vi and want to be able to use the cursor keys while
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
698 in insert mode might want to do something similar with vi->vim. Ubuntu seems
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
699 to be trying to train users to change their habits. Dog biscuits would be a
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
700 more honest approach.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
701
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
702 <p>Update: I've been pointed at
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
703 <a href=https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh>this</a> as evidence Ubuntu isn't
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
704 pushing a political agenda. Ok, maybe it's just really bad technical judgement.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
705 Are they honestly saying that people write shell scripts for the speed? And
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
706 how do you make a size argument and then install bash by default in ADDITION
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
707 to the other shell? Boggle. In 1991 after Linus Torvalds taught his term
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
708 program to understand the minix filesystem so he could upload and download
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
709 without rebooting, he taught it to handle the system calls of bash so he could
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
710 rm/mv/mkdir without rebooting. That's where Linux 0.0.1
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
711 came from. Bash was the default Linux shell _before_ 0.0.1. Be very
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
712 careful messing with that kind of a de-facto standard, guys. Dash is
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
713 garbage. Background a process with &amp; and then hit ctrl-c: it'll kill it.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
714 It doesn't understand blah/{blah,blah} file list syntax. It can't do
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
715 "source file.sh" (just ". file.sh", which is unreadable). I repeat: I'm not a
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
716 fan of bash (yeah, the bloat's getting crazy), but dash is broken.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
717
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
718 <p>And that still doesn't explain why "vi" can't use the cursor keys in
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
719 insert mode, but "vim" can...</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
720
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
721 <h2>March 6, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
722 <p>Version 0.2.0 is out. This one builds ext2 images which can boot up to a
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
723 shell prompt under qemu. This works on i686, armv4l, x86_64, and mipsel.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
724 (Sparc's broken. Anyone who cares about sparc is welcome to debug it.)</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
725
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
726 <p>There are now prebuilt ext2 image files in the download directory.
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
727 The kernels are in the mini-native tarballs. (Yeah, I should repackage that
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
728 next release.) The system emulator invocation for each platform is
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
729 the appropriate sources/configs file, and run-mini-native.sh invokes 'em.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
730
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
731 <p>The mailing list is in the usual place if you have any questions.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
732
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
733 <h2>January 14, 2007</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
734 <p>There's a new irc channel for the project, #firmware on freenode.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
735
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
736 <p><a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware?cl=88>Changeset 88</a> builds
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
737 i686, x86_64, armv4l, mips, and sparc. I've made a release tarball of
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
738 that (<a href=downloads/firmware-0.1.1.tar.bz2>firmware 0.1.1</a>, "It works
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
739 for me"), and updated the prebuilt cross-compiler tarballs in the
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
740 <a href=downloads>downloads</a> directory. I've added a big README and
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
741 prebuilt mini-native tarballs for each platform (although packing them up into
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
742 something qemu can boot is currently left as an exercise for the reader).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
743
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
744 <p>Speaking of which, I'm currently working on adding ext2 packaging
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
745 (via <a href=http://landley.net/code/toybox>toybox</a>) to the build scripts,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
746 so qemu system emulation can boot the result and then run the next stage
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
747 automatically.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
748
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
749 <h2>December 28, 2006</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
750 <p><a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware?cl=68>Changeset 68</a> builds
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
751 a native build environment with a working toolchain. And in celebration, I've
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
752 revamped the website with an actual navigation bar and content and such.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
753
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
754 <p>I should put out a release soon.</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
755
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
756 <h2>December 5, 2006</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
757 <p><a href=http://landley.net/hg/firmware?cl=27>Changeset 27</a> builds
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
758 a relocatable armv4l cross-compile toolchain! Download the tarball,
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
759 run ./download.sh, then run ./build.sh, then grab the "build/cross-compiler"
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
760 directory and use "bin/armv4l-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc" out of that (which
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
761 I admit is a bit of a mouthful, for which I blame the FSF).</p>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
762
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
763 <h2>August 6, 2006</h2>
3eeb77934265 Add project summary page to website, moving news to its own page.
Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
parents:
diff changeset
764 <p>Mecurial repository created. Nothing to see yet, move along...</p>