Pandora should leave Angstrom

[Grench]

I'm absolutely loving it as a development machine. Its got everything it needs to write its own software, and it works extremely well. Android and iOS don't have that. They are the OS of enslaved hardware, wherein the hardware is useless without, at least, a laptop upon which to set up the development environment.

I can understand that statement when made about iOS - locked down and closed source.


Android is a Linux distro under the VERY thick hood. But it IS open source and it sounds like the Android Kernel modifications may be coming back to the primary Linux kernel? I'm not the expert though.


http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/7503-living-in-an-android-world/


I'm still wondering if an Android based OS can be made to play nicely - and function as a full Linux OS. From 50,000 feet away it sounds like a good idea. I don't know the details though.

 

[mcobit]

You can build the kernel on Pandora in 3.5 hours at 800mhz. Not a big deal

 

[WizardStan]

Needs about a gig of swap space as well, I've found.

 

[mcobit]

I used 512

 

[Prometheus]

It was announced in another thread that we're done updating Angstrom at HF6. I take that to mean that our OS is dead ended. Is this incorrect?

Are you sure that this isn't about the now-disproven notion that Zaxxon, the current Pandora OS release - not Ångström - was meant to be done with by Hotfix 6, to be replaced by the next release, Yar's Revenge, and updated via a repo of some sort?


There's been no talk of Ångström being dead-ended at all, to the best of my knowledge. Quite the opposite - I gather that Yar's is meant to be more in-line with current Ångström releases, thus negating the current issue where installing from the Ångström repo can break things.

Not the one I was thinking of, but it gets the same point across:


http://boards.openpa...post__p__123319

I must be missing the point, I'm afraid, as those are Craig's thoughts from a Pandora 2 speculation thread, and the quoted post doesn't appear to say anything remotely to the effect of "We're announcing that we're done with updating Ångström for the Panora at Hotfix 6.", nor can I see how anyone could possibly interpret it as such.


It would help a great deal if you could find the one that you were thinking of, as this one doesn't seem to support your point at all.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I used 512

I used 256, but with gcc-4.5.2/make-3.82 under Slackware.


And i'm not sure it swapped a lot.


Compiled without X.


Next try, maybe in one week, i'll do a distcc between 2 OP.

 

[skeezix]

torpor -- I'm ribbing you, but hopefully you see my point -- you push and push, then when I say 'hey, okay, why don't you help with ___'.. you duck out So it seems ... you shoudlnt' be saying you'd do this and that, if you're really so busy; But I also see your point -- if we made it _easy_ enough, like easy as Sunday morning easy .. so you could just do some real work that you've got handy... you'd do it. So yeah, its a question of dithering. **


So the question is.. how easy does it need to be to get your (and other..) participants; I mean, if someone goes through and builds a bunch of stuff, theres still a high chance you wouldn't jump in (not easy enough, or you're just too busy.)


And ultimately, imho, its just because of population; given X units, and y% devs, and Z% interested in firmware'etc and not personal projects and ug, gamma% that have free time.. it doesn't leave many until we hit 50,000 units or more.


*shrug*


Me, I do what I can, which is a fair amount I think, especially all things considered Touche! (But as you see, I cheat.. I very carefully keep libpnd and related all buildable on anythign, with no crazy OE dependancies


jeff


** Any post in which I can refer to a Faith No More track is a win, in my books:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TXcuG28qHsA?feature=oembed

 

[Grench]

torpor -- I'm ribbing you, but hopefully you see my point -- you push and push, then when I say 'hey, okay, why don't you help with ___'.. you duck out So it seems ... you shoudlnt' be saying you'd do this and that, if you're really so busy; But I also see your point -- if we made it _easy_ enough, like easy as Sunday morning easy .. so you could just do some real work that you've got handy... you'd do it. So yeah, its a question of dithering. **


So the question is.. how easy does it need to be to get your (and other..) participants; I mean, if someone goes through and builds a bunch of stuff, theres still a high chance you wouldn't jump in (not easy enough, or you're just too busy.)


And ultimately, imho, its just because of population; given X units, and y% devs, and Z% interested in firmware'etc and not personal projects and ug, gamma% that have free time.. it doesn't leave many until we hit 50,000 units or more.


*shrug*


Me, I do what I can, which is a fair amount I think, especially all things considered Touche! (But as you see, I cheat.. I very carefully keep libpnd and related all buildable on anythign, with no crazy OE dependancies


jeff


** Any post in which I can refer to a Faith No More track is a win, in my books:


**+And if you like FNM, then of course, check this out, and tell me if you know anything remotely like it (metal, ska, jazz, improv, all within 60 seconds bits .. I so miss these guys):

Highly expressive front man with an innovative band. A few things you might like - from one extreme to another...


Warning, some of these get a bit... um... twisted. I'll have to code embed it over multiple posts due to media limits.

Squirrel Nut Zippers:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAt4qWvz_8[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUp_xDqwa1I[/media]


Southern Culture on the Skids:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72j7Ars1r5g[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUP5rwVNJko[/media]


Cherry Poppin Daddies...  No, NOT Zuit Suit Riot:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWJG7YCHHfc[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xNORXC60_4&feature=related[/media]


Smashed Gladys

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NDVZnHe3hM&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL074F70846E19257C[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEbbE1U3R1A&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL074F70846E19257C[/media]


Life, Sex, Death

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3G0n-JLch0&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL391654DE086DF0A7[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFlf3TGiRO4&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL391654DE086DF0A7[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zch7UKER6FE&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL391654DE086DF0A7[/media]

Enjoy - or not. Five bands you'd never expect on the same 'playlist'.

 

[Grench]

Another one I should have added...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MEDB4xJsXVo?feature=oembed

 

[ibisum]

Yikes, not into any of that music, in fact I can't stand any of it. Hooray for diversity, though.

Next try, maybe in one week, i'll do a distcc between 2 OP.

Thats really something I've wanted to check into for years, and I guess when I get my next 2 Pandoras I'll have 2 more reasons to do it. Lets hear about your progress with this when you get it set up, it could be a nice way to solve the Angstrom build problem, sensibly. </ducks>

torpor -- I'm ribbing you, but hopefully you see my point.

Your point about me personally not being much of a contributor and more of a complainer is fair, but actually I try to contribute in ways that I can, not in ways that I wish I could. Wishing and doing are related, you don't often do something without making a decision to do it. I've decided that even in an ideal world I only have a few hours per week, maximum, to contribute to Pandora-related stuff, and when I do, I want to be productive. Thus, PandoraWakebreaker, 'bollocks discovery', PandOricutron, Dizzy Wizards port (incomplete), SynthStation.pnd (incomplete), and now LOAD81 and so on. Notice a pattern? All of these projects can help the platform in some way, but don't require a huge over-commitment of hours and hours of time. Like it or not, but notaz simply has more time for Pandora kernel development than I do, or else he wouldn't have taken the lead as he has. Same with the guys who have OE set up and are able to reproduce the Firmware OS build conditions locally. Every time I've sat down to try to keep up with the main guys on the distro issue, I run into 'hurry up and wait' issues like building OE for the umpteenth time, only to have it die two hours later because some mirror moved, or something was patched somewhere that broke something, or the Pandora tree is a year behind the mainline, or something manually was tweaked that isn't actually out there in a distro for duplication and so on.








My desire, or wish, is that those who have already gotten the build-tree dust settled were able to share that work properly - and I truly believe that if they could just switch to a community-sharable VM, with everything onboard, it would give a leg up to us all - not just me. So when I complain, I'm only attempting a strategy/policy shift, and am not in any way trying to detract from the valuable, hard work already done by others. I know notaz and others have done a great deal of work for the community - I only wish there were a way the nuts and bolts were shareable in a way that makes trusted resources available to trusted developers, and of course I suppose you are saying I can't be trusted. Fair enough. I'll stop moaning, as long as someone, somewhere in this thread, acknowledges the fact that the community problem-solving related to the OE firmware builds could be better tackled in the near future.

 

[Bosbeetle]

** Any post in which I can refer to a Faith No More track is a win, in my books:


**+And if you like FNM, then of course, check this out, and tell me if you know anything remotely like it (metal, ska, jazz, improv, all within 60 seconds bits .. I so miss these guys):

Wow completely offtopic but I like to spam my mike patton collection here (all of these cds have at least one song featuring mr patton, but most of them are 'mike patton projects')

Suffice to say I like the mans music (not complete it has gotten bigger since I made this picture)


Missing are: the new single by secret chiefs 3 featuring mike patton ( thats almost mr bungle ), pranzo oltrazista, weird little boy, and the dreamers christmas LP and 7'' with mike singing a christmas song

 

[notaz]

or something manually was tweaked that isn't actually out there in a distro for duplication and so on.

I can tell you one thing, assumptions like this out of your ass that you keep pulling without even looking is an insult to everything we do here.

 

[ibisum]

If you can do what you want with SDL, use that, I'd even say we should remove libpnd functions which duplicate that functionality and see if something breaks. This stuff is painful to maintain, I have to do pretty nasty kernels hacks for things like libpnd (input handling part of it) to keep working.

Dunno what your hostility is all about, I'm not criticizing you, but maybe your pretty, nasty, kernel hacks are out there for public consumption in code form somewhere, I haven't checked lately. Stop taking it so seriously, you're a hero and nobody like me is going to negatively impact that foregone conclusion.

 

[notaz]

If you can do what you want with SDL, use that, I'd even say we should remove libpnd functions which duplicate that functionality and see if something breaks. This stuff is painful to maintain, I have to do pretty nasty kernels hacks for things like libpnd (input handling part of it) to keep working.

Dunno what your hostility is all about, I'm not criticizing you, but maybe your pretty, nasty, kernel hacks are out there for public consumption in code form somewhere, I haven't checked lately. Stop taking it so seriously, you're a hero and nobody like me is going to negatively impact that foregone conclusion.

I have no idea what you are responding to, or what you mean with that hero part, but you keep putting up that "private tweaks", "local changes" thing up over and over again without any grounds, maybe you should stop spreading misinformation first instead of complaining about my hostility.

 

[ibisum]

Notaz, quit with the hate. Maybe you should take a look at and answer the question honestly: "are there things I know about the OpenPandora firmware build that nobody else knows and which would be extraordinally difficult for someone new to the project to find out about without pestering me about it?" I'm positive you're not being honest about the answers to this question, and instead choose to insult my intelligence with ad hominem attacks on my person. Screw that, the fact is every single time I go looking for info about a problem, you got there first or are somehow involved (DSP, GLES, you name it) .. if you'd only publish a decent VM with your built setup we could all track along with you and stop having these ridiculous prissy cat-fights about 'whose method of group development is best'. Fact: you've got a working build environment for the Pandora-branch of OE, Fact: anyone else who wants to get there is going to have to jump through hoops and do a lot of hair-pulling before they can catch up.


Like I said, quit with the hate. I'm only asking for better tools, and have absolutely zero interest in your psychology lessons.


You said:

assumptions like this out of your ass that you keep pulling

And I pulled something out of your ass, about custom tweaks to the kernel that have to be there, or else libpnd will break. WOW, I would *NEVER* have known that if I hadn't gone looking for it. Too bad I can't, instead, have a look at the build tree, read a commit message, and understand why your pretty, nasty hacks (your words, not mine) are there in the first place. Or .. can I? If so, great .. where? I tried scoping out notaz.gp2x.de/misc/pnd/ to see a collection of your patches, but: 403 - index denied. Bummer.

 

[notaz]

Notaz, quit with the hate. Maybe you should take a look at and answer the question honestly: "are there things I know about the OpenPandora firmware build that nobody else knows and which would be extraordinally difficult for someone new to the project to find out about without pestering me about it?"

For 1000000th time, NO!

I'm positive you're not being honest about the answers to this question, and instead choose to insult my intelligence with ad hominem attacks on my person.

You need to back that up with something, until then my "ass" comment stands valid. You are slandering me in public and then wonder about my hostility.

Screw that, the fact is every single time I go looking for info about a problem, you got there first or are somehow involved (DSP, GLES, you name it) .. if you'd only publish a decent VM with your built setup we could all track along with you and stop having these ridiculous prissy cat-fights about 'whose method of group development is best'. Fact: you've got a working build environment for the Pandora-branch of OE, Fact: anyone else who wants to get there is going to have to jump through hoops and do a lot of hair-pulling before they can catch up.

The only working build setup I have access to is ED's build server, and we can't give access to that, read my previous posts.


And here you go with the build VM thing again, do you have problems with reading and comprehension skills? Go read my previous posts why it's isn't here.

You said:

assumptions like this out of your ass that you keep pulling

And I pulled something out of your ass, about custom tweaks to the kernel that have to be there, or else libpnd will break. WOW, I would *NEVER* have known that if I hadn't gone looking for it.

So you expect me to go reporting all development details to you or something? Of course you will not know something if you are not looking for it.

Too bad I can't, instead, have a look at the build tree, read a commit message, and understand why your pretty, nasty hacks (your words, not mine) are there in the first place. Or .. can I?

Since when is the code supposed to sit in the build tree (whatever that means)? There are 2241 different packages installed on pandora, you want all those sources in one place? Kernel changes live in kernel tree, package sources are picked from upstream projects with occasional patches that sit in openembedded.git/openpandora.oe.git . This is the hack commit I was referring to, in ideal world we would not need it and could just use mainline code, but now we need this nasty hack so that existing software works. Every deviation from mainline like this creates maintenance pain.

If so, great .. where? I tried scoping out notaz.gp2x.de/misc/pnd/ to see a collection of your patches, but: 403 - index denied. Bummer.

So now I'm supposed to be responsible for that you are looking in the wrong place? The sources are hosted at git.openpandora.org, how hard is to understand that?

 

[ibisum]

So you expect me to go reporting all development details to you or something? Of course you will not know something if you are not looking for it.

No, I expect you to report it *somewhere* that is accessible to developers, not just me.

And here you go with the build VM thing again, do you have problems with reading and comprehension skills?

Do you have problems with working in a team? One the one hand: "No Build Server for You!" On the other hand: "No Builder VM for you, either!"


Umm, okay then. I'll just re-do all the work already done to set up a build server, toolchains and so on, download the not-very-well-supported OE tree, struggle through getting it built in spite of missing mirrors and so on, wait a few hours until it builds, then try to work out whats different from my firmware image and the one you are producing.

Kernel changes live in kernel tree, package sources are picked from upstream projects with occasional patches that sit in openembedded.git/openpandora.oe.git . This is the hack commit I was referring to, in ideal world we would not need it and could just use mainline code, but now we need this nasty hack so that existing software works. Every deviation from mainline like this creates maintenance pain.

Very interesting bit of reading to comprehend.

So now I'm supposed to be responsible for that you are looking in the wrong place?

Nope, you're supposed to just do whatever the hell you want, of course. Not once have I ever said "notaz, do that" .. I think you're just internalizing this whole discussion because you think you're the only one competent enough to actually do anything, apparently ..

 

[pmprog]

Guys, take five...


Regarding the VM, I'll probably say the reason one doesn't exist is because Notaz et al are (probably) not running VMs, so producing a VM means all the work again from scratch; there's no easy "clone" option (at least, that's my understanding). Hence why Notaz is saying build your own.


Sure, you might be able to disk copy, I don't fiddle with VMs enough for that though.


Regardless, I shall endevour to look at producing a VM when I get chance, which isn't going to be for a while, and unless somebody else decides to beat me to it. But torpor, you said yourself you're busy with user-mode stuff, so there's no rush for the VM.


We'll get there... slowly but surely.


Rock on

 

[ibisum]

I'm out, its pretty clear the stalwarts have the helm.

 

[skeezix]

Easy guys easy .. I hat eto see multiple well meaing folks at each others throats; neither of you means it, but you're both down this road to pain


Leave it be; the tl;dr is -- theres only 1 guy doing most of the firmware work right now, and he's overloaded; there are already multiopel VMs out there, and someone needs to tweak those to be ffirmware build ready, but its not going to be notaz; torpor is too busy, but wants one bad.


Thats it, thats the summary.. /thread


FWIW, I think a VM could be built to do this, with some assumptions as noted above .. ie: a fw without binary blobs that aren't distable, etc.


So the only question is..


---> Is someone going to pursue this, and if so.. please keep discussion and progress on the firmware mailing list; see http://pandorawiki.org/Firmware_governance


pmprog has noted he might be willing to tackle it, but he's still newish to Linux and unix mentality, so he will probably need help; a team of people would be great!


jeff