# HG changeset patch # User Rob Landley # Date 1269907234 18000 # Node ID 01a1b737c389e91025ce07f4b8d6bfae68a5f069 # Parent ae58612223220bf59a9439d752ce9f5c09c7684f Announce 0.9.11 release. diff -r ae5861222322 -r 01a1b737c389 www/news.html --- a/www/news.html Mon Mar 29 08:17:24 2010 -0500 +++ b/www/news.html Mon Mar 29 19:00:34 2010 -0500 @@ -2,6 +2,119 @@ News
+

March 29, 2010

Version 0.9.11 is out, +based on hg commit +1020. We're closing in on a 1.0 release, but not quite there yet.

+ +

This version upgrades to Linux 2.6.33, uClibc 0.9.30.3, and BusyBox +1.16.1.

+ +Improved native builds
+ +

Most targets now have prebuilt binaries +for dropbear, +strace, +busybox. These are statically +linked against uClibc, so just download, set the executable bit, and run.

+ +

These dropbear and strace binaries are built using the automated three-disk +native build capability introduced back in November, +which has been improved and genericized this release. Now one script creates +a build image (see examples in sources/native-builds) and another script +launches a system image with that build image attached as the third +hard drive (/dev/hdc), telling the system image to automatically build +those source packages and upload the result to the host via ftp.

+ +

So to reproduce the dropbear and strace binaries for a supported ARCH, +you could do:

+ +

+./build.sh ARCH
+sources/native-builds/static-tools.sh tools.hdc
+sources/more/native-build.sh ARCH tools.hdc output
+

+ +

When the build exits, the results should be in the host's "output" +directory.

+ +Targets
+

The arm, mips, x86, x86-64 targets that worked last time still work. +The armv4eb and m68k targets still don't work.

+ +

The powerpc and sparc targets have been upgraded. Powerpc now works with +the 3-disk automated native build (although you'll need qemu 0.12.4 to take +advantage of this). The sparc dynamic linker still doesn't work in uClibc, +but the statically linked system is now working well enough to build packages +natively.

+ +

New targets this release are i486 (thanks David Seikel) and mips64 (which +mostly works, but the native toolchain isn't quite properly configured to +build stuff with yet).

+ +

Finally, the sh4 target was broken by a cosmetic cleanup of the startup +assembly code in Linux 2.6.33 that rendered any binutils version older +than 4 months unusable to build sh4. While it's possible to patch around +this, it hasn't yet been worth effort. The Linux-sh4 maintainer is aware +of the issue, but explicitly +doesn't +care about users other than his employer, and so far nobody +else seems to care enough about supporting the discontinued Sega Dreamcast +game console to argue with him. (Might revisit this next release, but m68k +support is a higher priority.)

+ +Infrastructure
+

The system-image's "run-emulator.sh" is now a much smaller and simpler +script, consisting primarily of the qemu command line. (And if you export +DEBUG=1 it prints the emulator command line.) The distcc and hdb +setup code moved to dev-environment.sh.

+ +

The screenshots page is working again, if a bit +stale.

+ +

The bisectinate.sh script (to automatically git bisect a build issue) +has been updated, more to come next release.

+ +

The download.sh script has been updated to understand FORK=1 and download +packages in parallel. (And to extract them in parallel when +EXTRACT_ALL=1.)

+ +

The new export_if_blank shell function allows several more environment +variables to be overridden, including TOP, SOURCES, SRCDIR, PATCHDIR, +BUILD, SRCTREE, HOSTTOOLS, WRAPDIR, CC, and STAGE_NAME.

+ +

I'd also like to thank the debugging efforts of Wolfgang Denk, who hit +as many bugs trying to use this project as I normally do with other people's. +He eventually got discouraged and left, but thanks to his efforts:

+ +

We now unset several environment variables (such as ARCH and +CROSS_COMPILE) that break things if the host exports random data in them +before the build. (Yes, this fights with export_if_blank above, and +the way configuration works in general. Some more design works is necessary +here to let you configure the project with environment variables, but +not be confused by existing environment debris.)
BUILD_STATIC=none can how handle the case where the host toolchain +can't build any static binaries at all.
The CROSS_SMOKE_TEST implementation (which had bit rotted) was fixed and +moved to its own script (sources/more/cross-smoke-test.sh), which is called by +build.sh as necessary.
+ +
Note that actually trying to use it is a question +of getting qemu application emulation to work for your target. For +arm you need to tweak /proc/sys/vm/mmap_min_addr as root. For ppc you +need this patch. For mips64 somebody still needs to +implement it (no matter what gentoo thinks).
+ +
(There's a reason the smoke test was disabled long enough to bit-rot. +It broke for qemu reasons more often than it found bugs in the toolchain.)
+

+ +

February 2, 2010

Version 0.9.10 is out, @@ -66,6 +179,7 @@ dropbear/strace binaries for all targets (not just the last one) and it should properly be running smoketest.sh again.

December 8, 2009

Version 0.9.9 is out, based on hg commit 921.