Mailing List Archive

MIPS32 Little-Endian softfloat packages, anyone interested?
Hello!

For the last 3 years I've been "maintaining" a modest collection of
packages for generic little-endian MIPS32 softfloat systems (mainly for my
Alchemy hardware). It includes a lot of stuff which is currently use-masked
on MIPS (qt4, scanner support, etc; almost all run-tested on real hardware).

Is there interest in the Gentoo(-MIPS) community for these packages?
A list of packages can be found at [1] as well as the custom portage profile
which was used to build them at [2].

The package tarball is ~1.1GB in size; 90% of the packages have been built with
gcc-4.3.3. Mainly generic stuff I needed to do my work plus a few
just-for-fun things like KDE-4.2.2 (yes it runs, but at a glacial pace).

Thanks!
Manuel Lauss

[1] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-packages-090420.tar.CONTENTS
[2] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-etc-portage.tar.bz2
Re: MIPS32 Little-Endian softfloat packages, anyone interested? [ In reply to ]
Manuel Lauss wrote:
> Hello!
>
> For the last 3 years I've been "maintaining" a modest collection of
> packages for generic little-endian MIPS32 softfloat systems (mainly for my
> Alchemy hardware). It includes a lot of stuff which is currently use-masked
> on MIPS (qt4, scanner support, etc; almost all run-tested on real hardware).
>
> Is there interest in the Gentoo(-MIPS) community for these packages?
> A list of packages can be found at [1] as well as the custom portage profile
> which was used to build them at [2].
>
> The package tarball is ~1.1GB in size; 90% of the packages have been built with
> gcc-4.3.3. Mainly generic stuff I needed to do my work plus a few
> just-for-fun things like KDE-4.2.2 (yes it runs, but at a glacial pace).
>
> Thanks!
> Manuel Lauss
>
> [1] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-packages-090420.tar.CONTENTS
> [2] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-etc-portage.tar.bz2

This is pretty neat. Although, our focus is more on the bigger MIPS
workstation, like the SGI stuff and even some of the Longsoon machines. We
actually have a separate team that focuses more on the embedded machines,
including embedded ARM, MIPS, and other related equipment.

I'd post this to the gentoo-embedded list, and you might find a few people over
there interested. Some of the methods you used for building these packages,
including any toolchain changes, eclass/ebuild changes, might be useful to them
over there.


Thanks!

--
Joshua Kinard
Gentoo/MIPS
kumba@gentoo.org

"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our
lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."

--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic
Re: MIPS32 Little-Endian softfloat packages, anyone interested? [ In reply to ]
Hi Joshua,

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 08:36:16PM -0400, Kumba wrote:
> Manuel Lauss wrote:
>> Hello!
>> For the last 3 years I've been "maintaining" a modest collection of
>> packages for generic little-endian MIPS32 softfloat systems (mainly for my
>> Alchemy hardware). It includes a lot of stuff which is currently
>> use-masked
>> on MIPS (qt4, scanner support, etc; almost all run-tested on real
>> hardware).
>> Is there interest in the Gentoo(-MIPS) community for these packages?
>> A list of packages can be found at [1] as well as the custom portage
>> profile
>> which was used to build them at [2].
>> The package tarball is ~1.1GB in size; 90% of the packages have been built
>> with
>> gcc-4.3.3. Mainly generic stuff I needed to do my work plus a few
>> just-for-fun things like KDE-4.2.2 (yes it runs, but at a glacial pace).
>> Thanks!
>> Manuel Lauss
>> [1]
>> http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-packages-090420.tar.CONTENTS
>> [2] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf/mips32elsf-etc-portage.tar.bz2
>
> This is pretty neat. Although, our focus is more on the bigger MIPS
> workstation, like the SGI stuff and even some of the Longsoon machines. We
> actually have a separate team that focuses more on the embedded machines,
> including embedded ARM, MIPS, and other related equipment.

Although Alchemys are lacking a FPU and a decent GFX accelerator, I think
performance-wise they're not that slower than SGI boxes.


> I'd post this to the gentoo-embedded list, and you might find a few people
> over there interested. Some of the methods you used for building these
> packages, including any toolchain changes, eclass/ebuild changes, might be
> useful to them over there.

I actually didn't change any ebuilds, it's as "vanilla" as the Gentoo
installations on my x64 machines (all packages have been built natively).

I'll contact the embedded folks!

Thanks!
Manuel Lauss