On 05/06/2014 10:37 PM, Joshua Kinard wrote: > >> And you haven't really convinced me why mips4 is desired, when mips3 can >> run just fine on mips4 hardware. I think you need to be realist, and >> take into consideration, not just your personal needs, but also the time >> it actually takes to build and maintain all these stages. I explained >> that so many times already, I am not going to do that again. >> As Anthony said, mipsel3 is used by lemote, so keeping it alive is >> probably a good thing (though the newer hardware is mips64 capable) > > Well, to me, mips3 != mipsel3. Sorry about that. When I say mips3/mips4 > (lowercase), I usually refer to big-endian. If I capitalize the ISA, i.e., > MIPS-III or MIPS-IV, then I'm referring to the entire ISA, regardless of > endianness. > > So, to re-clarify my original statement, for big-endian SGI systems, we > probably only need mips4 and I guess the mips4_r10 stages. I don't know if > any of our users still have or run R4x00 mips3 big-endian equipment. If so, > well, I can do that too, then. It's just a higher electric bill :)
Dropping mips4 and building mips3 (yes BE) should satisfy everyone even if they don't get the maximum optimizations right after the stage3 unpacking. But if you want to do all 3 of them, I will not stop you :) > > And it's not really my personal preference. Based on my understanding of > what we currently support, that's what makes sense to me. I know you work > on MIPS stuff for your day job, but it's a hobby for me, so I have to > prioritize things a bit differently. That said, I've done catalyst runs > before, so I know how time-consuming they can be, especially if the build > breaks somewhere in the middle of a long compile. I am not getting paid to do Gentoo/MIPS (not sure when I said the opposite) so it's still a hobby for me that's why I want to do other things as well. We can all agree that being an arch team member is not just about building stages. > > I think what we need to do is instead of having just one person like you or > Matt do all of the stage building, separate out the ISAs/ABIs/etc to the > people that actually care most about it. Anthony works with the mipsel3 > Lemote hardware, so if he wants, he can take care of mipsel3 stages; I'll > handle the SGI stuff since I know a lot about those machines; and you can > cover whichever of the newer ISAs matter most to you. > > Sound reasonable? We can even work out a set timetable for stage building, > or just release individual stages on an as-needed basis. Works perfectly fine for me. I think each one building his stages on his own timescale is better. > > >>> Otherwise, just e-mail me your mips3/mips4/mips4_r10 spec files, any custom >>> tweaks/changes to catalyst, and any specific instructions you do >>> before/during/after a catalyst build and I'll put the O2 to work if needed. >>> >> >> There is nothing special about my spec files and I do nothing special in >> catalyst so feel free to pick up the mips3 and mips4 stages. If you are >> having troubles with catalyst email the gentoo-catalyst@ ML. That might >> actually be a good way for you to become active again ;) > > Back in the past, I had to tweak catalyst sometimes to get it to do stage > builds properly. A lot of those bugs have probably been fixed by now, at > least for stage1-3. There are usually blockers and stuff due to MIPS being ~arch but catalyst, as a tool, works fine. The livecd stages and netboots, however, were much more > problematic. I don't think we do that anymore > > If you can still send me at least one of your stage3 spec files, that'd be > appreciated. It's been 5-6 years since I last messed with catalyst. The > Octane was my build platform, but combined with the bitrot that prevented it > from booting, moving, a new job, etc, I never got around to setting up stage > building on the O2. Now that I can boot Octane again, I can at least > recover my old spec files, though. Might help if I ever attempt to tackle > the livecd or netboot builds again. I will email you a complete set of stage1/2/3 for, say, mips3 and then it's easy to figure out what do change for the rest :) -- Regards, Markos Chandras
