Maverick toolchain

[Robbie Williamson]

On Wed, 2010-07-21 at 15:40 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote: 
> On 21.07.2010 15:30, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> > On Wed, 2010-07-21 at 14:49 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> >> On 21.07.2010 10:00, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> >>> On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 21:45 +0200, Matthias Klose wrote:
> >>>> On 20.07.2010 21:03, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> >>>>> On 20/07/10 16:53, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> >>>>>> On 20/07/10 12:25, Matthias Klose wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I suggest to enable the Linaro GCC on amd64, i386 and powerpc as well,
> >>>>>>> given the  comittment of the Linaro toolchain working group to
> >>>>>>> addressing potential regressions on amd64 and i386 too.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Doko, thank you for the feedback. Given that we are midway through the
> >>>>>> release cycle, and that we have not done *any* system testing with the
> >>>>>> amd64 and i386 packages/kernels built using this toolchain, I'm
> >>>>>> concerned with making this change now.  As acting release manager, I
> >>>>>> propose we move to Linaro's GCC now for the armel flavor of Ubuntu
> >>>>>> 10.10, and make the change for amd64 and i386 in 11.04.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I don't want to rock the RM boat, especially since I'm responsible for
> >>>>> the tighter timelines of 10.10, but this is a change which has been in
> >>>>> play since UDS, has had extensive analysis and a full rebuild test with
> >>>>> detailed examination. It's certainly not a new thing being raised at
> >>>>> this stage, and we agreed not to press the issue earlier only because
> >>>>> the offer was made to do the testing and decide then. It would be wrong
> >>>>> to have made that offer and then decline to make the change even after
> >>>>> the testing comes back as favourably as it did - next time, folks won't
> >>>>> be as willing to leave the door open for extended analysis.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> It's also quite material to the collaboration of Linaro and the rest of
> >>>>> the platform.
> >>>>
> >>>> Afaiu the biggest concern to the Linaro GCC is it's use for the kernel build.
> >>>> Apparently nobody including myself did explicitly communicate to the kernel team
> >>>> about the decision in the arm toolchain session (arm-m-tool-chain-selection).
> >>> In addition, nothing has ever been posted to ubuntu-devel or
> >>> ubuntu-devel-discuss about this, so I feel it may catch many Ubuntu
> >>> contributors and our derivatives off guard.  I know this was discussed
> >>> at UDS, but I don't know if most thought a session titled "ARM Toolchain
> >>> Selection" [1] encompassed toolchain selection for non-ARM architectures
> >>> as well.
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Specs/M/ARMToolChainSelection
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> If this is the only major concern I'd like to propose to use the gcc-4.4-fsf
> >>>> packages (which still need landing in maverick) to build the kernel (shipping
> >>>> the gcc-4.4-fsf binary with the name kgcc on the CDs).
> >>> Please talk to the kernel team and see what they say.
> >>
> >> gcc-4.4-fsf packages are now available for amd64, i386 (armel still building) in
> >> https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain-r/+archive/ppa/+packages, providing a
> >> binary `kgcc'.  This is currently a build with multilibs disabled. I'll update
> >> the archive with a multilib'd compiler after the armel build is finished. If we
> >> decide to upload this to maverick, this will provide at least a short term
> >> solution for the Ubuntu/ARM team to build kernel images for the next alpha.
> >>
> >>     Matthias
> >
> > After speaking to members of the kernel team and tech board, it's been
> > decided to proceed with the original plan of switching to the Linaro
> > toolchain for armel, i386, and amd64 versions of Maverick.  Yeehaw! :)
> 
> I enabled it for powerpc too. I don't expect that somebody will show up to 
> support maverick on sparc and ia64, so then we only have one patch set on all 
> architectures.
> 
> test packages for the linaro enabled gcc-4.4 will show up in the 
> ubuntu-toolchain ppa. Uploading to maverick only after the currently building 
> armel build is in the archive and I get some feedback from the kernel team.
> 
>    Matthias
> 

Matthias,

With all this now said and done, please send an announcement of this
change to ubuntu-devel for awareness.

Thanks,
Robbie


-- 
Robbie Williamson                                      robbie at canonical.com 
Canonical, Ltd.                                   robbiew[irc.freenode.net]                               

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