[Dev] [ARM] Parabola ARM Port progress

[fauno]

André Silva <emulatorman at riseup.net> writes:

> Hey, some days ago we were talking about how to begin Parabola ARM
> project. The following points suggested were the next one:
>
> * Ebrasca sent a email (in spanish language) because he has interest to
> donate some ARM devices for the Parabola ARM project [0]. I told
> Jorginho to receive those devices to begin the project. He accepted it
> to give access via ssh to the hackers use it for testing and debugging.

awesome! \o/

> * Gaming4JC said there are a lot of different packages to take from Arch
> ARM [1]. e.g. arm5, armv6, armv7 and armv8 are all different. If the
> packages will be a lot we should have separate mirrors, but it will also
> would need more space for it.

i think we'll need to pick the most used architecture or the one
compatible with most of arm devices and focus on this.

> * We would rsync pull from Arch ARM, but Gaming4JC confirmed on their
> IRC that they do not allow rsync pulls. Critically, a mirror must to
> able to be set up to receive rsync pushes from a server. e.g. a server
> created by us. This can happen via rsyncd or over ssh. It do not make
> use of rsync pull for mirroring. They allow mirroring under invite only
> and custom rsyncd.conf and they push to mirrors. It was confirmed at
> #archlinux-arm by a developer WarheadsSE. So for this work, we need
> become a mirror and then fork their packages.

maybe we can setup our mirror in a way that the unfree packages get
removed in a second step, probably using a hard link backup so no extra
disk space is used:

arch-arm => private parabola mirror => public hard link backup with
unfree packages filtered out

the question is if arch-arm would agree to push to such a mirror.  in
the past they've expressed disregard for free software, but i don't know
if they would actively block a libre fork.

> * We need more power man to maintain ARM packages like the same way than
> we are doing in x86. Gaming4JC and ovruni have interest to begin it.
>
> * Icarious proposed fetch entire PKGBUILD and packages using a build
> server as alternative way.

it would be awesome if abs supported cross building :P

is jorginho going to setup the arm devices on a distcc network?  this
would require at least one extra x86 machine that's able to
cross-compile for arm (with ct-ng-libre or any other cross-toolchain)
and run a distcc server, so the arm device would delegate the compiling
part to it and just take care of linking and packaging (which is not
always the lighter part of the process, but still).

the arch arm people does this and i've tested succesfully on the
mips64el port.  it's not difficult to setup, it just needs the distcc
option enabled on the arm makepkg.conf and the distccd service running
on the x86 machines, appropiately configured to have the cross toolchain
in its PATH.

i would also advise to use dagpkg from libretools, since it can build
From abs in correct order of dependencies, and detect some circular
dependencies that i guess still exist in abs.

i can't commit to be an arm porter but i can give advise and some rants
:)

would it be possible to give libremakepkg the ability to run on a remote
build machine?  i'm thinking it would involve copying the files over ssh
to this machine and instruct it to run the local libremakepkg.

> Considerations and suggestions are welcome as we move forward with this
> project! :)
>
> Happy hacking \o/
>
> [0]:https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/2015-July/003120.html
> [1]:http://archlinuxarm.org/
>
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-- 
:O
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