Hi, All In our linux-loongson-community[1] project, Linux v2.6.37-rc4(master branch), v2.6.36.1, v2.6.35.9 are available for Loongson.
*Important Changes* 1. v2.6.37-rc4 adds Gdium support Most of the Gdium functions have been supported except the sound card and Hibernation/Suspend, a small defconfig with basic kernel options is added: arch/mips/configs/gdium_small_defconfig, If you need more kernel features, please refer to arch/mips/configs/lemote_defconfig and add them yourself. This support is mainly based on the work of Yajin and Arnaud Patard, thanks to them. 2. The above 3 versions applies the mainline "automated per session task groups" The mainline "automated per session task groups/autogroup" has improved the desktop response latency a lot, which is 'very very' important to our low-end Loongson machines, so, we backport and enable it by default. It doesn't work with BFS and some discussion shows autogroup works well as BFS but it is more stable than BFS, so, we just disable BFS and enable autogroup instead. 3. The above 3 versions appies "R4K Timer work with CPUFreq driver" The CPUFreq driver didn't work well before 2.6.36. In 2.6.36, GangLiang added a new high resolution MFGPT Timer implementation to make CPUFreq driver works, but unfortunately, Shiwei Liu has reported, with the new MFGPT Timer implementation, the system time slower down about 12s per hour, the cause is the limitation of the 16bit count register(overflow quickly) and the low frequency(low resolution, only about 1/32 us) of the MFGPT Timer. Now, based on the commit "Fix r4k clocksource and clockevent with cpufreq" from git://git.opensde.net/users/amery/linux-2.6.29-gdium", Some necessary cleanups & fixups has been added to make R4K Timer work very well with CPUFreq driver. As a result, we get a working CPUFreq driver and a stable system time, and therefore, from now on, to make CPUFreq driver work on Loongson machines, no need to driver an external Timer (except the persistent RTC Timer), this even save a hardware device. 4. Fixes the building failure of the CPUFreq driver (reported by Mads <[email protected]>, thanks to him) *Plan for future maintaining of the linux-loongson-community project* I have been very tired to maintain a bunch of the old branches and with the continuous development of the mainline Linux, the number of the old branches will increase very quickly, so, I think, we must give up some out-of-date old branches and just let them stay in the git repository, when the people need it, just fetch it and pull the updates from the -stable git repo maintained by Greg K-H and the MIPS -stable branches maintained by Ralf[2]. I plan to only maintain some specific branches: 1. The master branch This branch must be maintained timely, otherwise, we may be impossible to follow the mainline development and some drivers may be broken by the changes of the kernel APIs. Most of the new kernel versions has added some changes to the kernel APIs, so, the maintaining of this branch is time-consuming. Let's use the latest master branch as an example, I have fixed at least 5 bugs introduced by the mainline changes, most of them need several minutes or hours to debug and test. And sometimes, some new Linux-Loongson specific bugs may be found and reported by some active users, which also should be fixed. e.g. Shiwei Liu just reported the slowdown problem of the system time in 2.6.36 and I have spent at least 24 hours to make the R4K Timer to work normally with the CPUFreq driver. And the support of some new boards may be added, for example, the basic support of Gdium has been added in this master branch. After the patches in our master branches becomes stable, they should be pushed into the mainline, the time of upstream is uncertain, of course, it is also time consuming. 2. The latest -stable branch The latest -stable branch is the kernel version just older than the one in the master branch, currently, the version in our master branch is 2.6.37-rcX, the latest -stable branch is 2.6.36. 3. The latest -longterm branch The Linux community has made a plan to maintain a -longterm version of Linux, which is similar to the -stable version, but it may be maintained for longer. the 1st longterm version will be 2.6.35. so, this will also be maintained in our git repository. So, from now on, in our linux-loongson-community, only 2.6.35, the latest -stable branch and the master branch will be maintained. For the generic users, 2.6.35 is recommended, but If you need more features, the latest stable branch is a better choice, currently, it is 2.6.36, but for the 'active' users, welcome to test the master branch and report bugs, then we can get a bug-less stable branch, thanks in advance ;-) *Acknowledgement* Thanks to Lemote for providing the Loongson machines to maintain this project. Thanks to Shiwei Liu for maintaining a pre-installed Debian system with the latest stable Linux in http://www.bjlx.org.cn/loongson/install/. *More* This project is maintained in the maintainers' off-hour without pay ;-) so, the response latency of the Emails and the release time of the -stable versions can not be guaranteed, please be patient. If you have interest to play with this project, please access the homepage[1], there is a long TODO list, you can select one item, finish it and send patches to this mailing list. Of course, bug reports are welcome. and If you want to maintain this project together with us or want to maintain one of the branches, please also send an Email to this mailing list and CC to the maintainers. Best Regards, Wu Zhangjin ----------- [1] http://dev.lemote.com/code/linux-loongson-community [2] some steps to get a latest stable Linux for Loongson 1. Fetch the branch from linux-loongson-community git repository (Maintained by me, Zhang Le and Alex) // Init a local repo $ mkdir linux-loongson $ cd linux-loongson $ git init // Fetch a stable branch from linux-loongson-community git repo $ git fetch git://dev.lemote.com/linux-loongson-community.git linux-2.6.xx-stable $ git checkout -b 2.6.xx FETCH_HEAD 2. Pull the updates from the -stable git repo (Maintained by Greg K-H) $ git pull git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-2.6.xx.y.git Note: You may get merge conflicts, please fix it before build it, If you can not fix it easily, post a question to this mailing list and add me into the CC: list. the same to the below pull. 3. Pull the updates from Linux-mips git repo $ git pull git://git.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/linux.git linux-2.6.26-stable Now, you will get a latest stable Linux for Loongson, sometimes, you may need to get some fixups from the newer stable branches or the master branch in our git repository. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "loongson-dev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/loongson-dev?hl=en.
