2006/03/05 PPC Meeting Minutes
The meeting lasted about 1 hour 30 minutes, with 5 items on the agenda. GCC
4.1 was moved to the front of the agenda, as discussions were taking place
regarding it previous to the meeting. The new agenda layout was as follows:
1) GCC 4.1
2) The 2006.0 Release
3) Leadership
4) Genesi/Freescale/IBM Developer Programs
5) Installer Project PPC Porting
This was followed by an open-floor session.
== Agenda #1: GCC 4.1 ==
Discussions were made regarding gcc 4.1 support for ppc. This was mainly due
to the future unmasking of gcc 4.1 into ~arch. The consensus was that
dostrow, JoseJX, morfic, and myself had actively been testing ppc and gcc
4.1.
JoseJX and lu_zero had a few issues with 4.1, but JoseJX's issue found a quick
resolution, and lu_zero was using a stable only tree. Due to the use of the
stable ppc tree for gcc 4.1 testing, this puts us a step ahead in getting 4.1
ready for stable as well.
Discussion was also made towards enabling nptl and nptlonly as the default in
future releases. The old linuxthreads support would not be removed, only
deprecated towards the now better supported nptl. Users that wish to utilize
linuxthreads would be able to do so through a stage 1 install.
== Agenda #2: 2006.0 Release ==
First off was congrats on a great 2006.0 release. It was said to be better
than previous ones, and less stress was involved. Pylon also opened up
suggestions for 2006.1. JoseJX proposed using yaboot for Pegasos II
machines in the next release. This is mainly due to it supporting amiga
partitions, and being able to "just work".
pvdabeel also noted that Genesi has some beta firmware coming up, which
included framebuffer support, and that they were accepting ideas for new
functionality. One of the ideas mentioned was power-on after power-outage.
hansmi brought up the need for netboot, which was on the TODO list for both
ppc (Pylon) and ppc64 (dostrow).
== Agenda #3: Leadership ==
The main discussion here was to find a lead for project meetings. Many ideas
were brought up, and SeJo made a suggestion for a mailing list nomination.
An email was sent out to hansmi on the ppc alias, and voting will begin
shortly.
Some ideas were also proposed on recruiting, as well as the creation of a
#gentoo-ppc-dev channel, to isolate dev based discussions.
== Agenda 4: Genesi/Freescale/IBM Developer Programs ==
Talks went on with pvdabeel on the status of developer projects. The Efika
project (A PPC based embedded board) was said to start distribution to
developers on 2006/03/10, when the CPU's arrive from Freescale.
The OSW project was brought up, which is the 64 bit pegasos system in the
works. As it is only in the planning stages, not many specifics were given
about it, but it was mentioned that developers who did not receive the Efika,
would still be able to apply for the OSW.
A discussion followed about current Efika setups, and pvdabeel discussed that
Xorg running with an mpeg2 playing was demonstrated at FTF last june. Plans
were also in the way to get XGI cards for the boards, which would provide
graphics acceleration for the Efika unit.
== Agenda #5: Installer Porting to the PPC ==
agaffney discussed with the status of the porting of the Gentoo Linux
Installer project to the ppc architecture. The main problem that seemed to
be causing an issue was the formating of unused space as a partition on mac
disk labels. Another issue was looking at support for IBM based ppc machines
as well, whose bootloader and partition layout differed from that of MAC or
Pegasos systems. The basic plan of support was to handle pegasos 32 bit,
then mac 32 bit, mac 64 bit, IBM 64 bit, and pegasos 64 bit in around that
order.
== Open Floor ==
An open floor discussion followed afterwards, most of it being a continuation
of the previous agenda notes.
Alright, that should do it.. I hope I didn't miss anything important ;) (I
probably did :/).
Chris White
The meeting lasted about 1 hour 30 minutes, with 5 items on the agenda. GCC
4.1 was moved to the front of the agenda, as discussions were taking place
regarding it previous to the meeting. The new agenda layout was as follows:
1) GCC 4.1
2) The 2006.0 Release
3) Leadership
4) Genesi/Freescale/IBM Developer Programs
5) Installer Project PPC Porting
This was followed by an open-floor session.
== Agenda #1: GCC 4.1 ==
Discussions were made regarding gcc 4.1 support for ppc. This was mainly due
to the future unmasking of gcc 4.1 into ~arch. The consensus was that
dostrow, JoseJX, morfic, and myself had actively been testing ppc and gcc
4.1.
JoseJX and lu_zero had a few issues with 4.1, but JoseJX's issue found a quick
resolution, and lu_zero was using a stable only tree. Due to the use of the
stable ppc tree for gcc 4.1 testing, this puts us a step ahead in getting 4.1
ready for stable as well.
Discussion was also made towards enabling nptl and nptlonly as the default in
future releases. The old linuxthreads support would not be removed, only
deprecated towards the now better supported nptl. Users that wish to utilize
linuxthreads would be able to do so through a stage 1 install.
== Agenda #2: 2006.0 Release ==
First off was congrats on a great 2006.0 release. It was said to be better
than previous ones, and less stress was involved. Pylon also opened up
suggestions for 2006.1. JoseJX proposed using yaboot for Pegasos II
machines in the next release. This is mainly due to it supporting amiga
partitions, and being able to "just work".
pvdabeel also noted that Genesi has some beta firmware coming up, which
included framebuffer support, and that they were accepting ideas for new
functionality. One of the ideas mentioned was power-on after power-outage.
hansmi brought up the need for netboot, which was on the TODO list for both
ppc (Pylon) and ppc64 (dostrow).
== Agenda #3: Leadership ==
The main discussion here was to find a lead for project meetings. Many ideas
were brought up, and SeJo made a suggestion for a mailing list nomination.
An email was sent out to hansmi on the ppc alias, and voting will begin
shortly.
Some ideas were also proposed on recruiting, as well as the creation of a
#gentoo-ppc-dev channel, to isolate dev based discussions.
== Agenda 4: Genesi/Freescale/IBM Developer Programs ==
Talks went on with pvdabeel on the status of developer projects. The Efika
project (A PPC based embedded board) was said to start distribution to
developers on 2006/03/10, when the CPU's arrive from Freescale.
The OSW project was brought up, which is the 64 bit pegasos system in the
works. As it is only in the planning stages, not many specifics were given
about it, but it was mentioned that developers who did not receive the Efika,
would still be able to apply for the OSW.
A discussion followed about current Efika setups, and pvdabeel discussed that
Xorg running with an mpeg2 playing was demonstrated at FTF last june. Plans
were also in the way to get XGI cards for the boards, which would provide
graphics acceleration for the Efika unit.
== Agenda #5: Installer Porting to the PPC ==
agaffney discussed with the status of the porting of the Gentoo Linux
Installer project to the ppc architecture. The main problem that seemed to
be causing an issue was the formating of unused space as a partition on mac
disk labels. Another issue was looking at support for IBM based ppc machines
as well, whose bootloader and partition layout differed from that of MAC or
Pegasos systems. The basic plan of support was to handle pegasos 32 bit,
then mac 32 bit, mac 64 bit, IBM 64 bit, and pegasos 64 bit in around that
order.
== Open Floor ==
An open floor discussion followed afterwards, most of it being a continuation
of the previous agenda notes.
Alright, that should do it.. I hope I didn't miss anything important ;) (I
probably did :/).
Chris White
Attached Files:
-
gentoo-ppc-meeting-20060305.log (74.1 KB)