ARC rebootstrap prereq (was Re: switching ARC to 64-bit time_t )

[Vineet Gupta]

Hi,

On 3/25/20 10:54 PM, Helmut Grohne wrote:
> Hi Vineet,
>
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 05:25:58PM -0700, Vineet Gupta wrote:
>> ARC glibc is still in works, but assuming that will happen in near future what
>> other upstream prerequisites are needed. The obvious ones would be Linux kernel,
>> gcc, binutils: all 3 of which are supported for ARC. From a quick glance at debian
>> wiki pages, I presume *bootstrap is mostly done native, so needs qemu ? (full/user
>> emulation ? And does qemu need to be upstream too ?
> Given that I ran into the glibc issue, I can tell that at least
> rudimentary arc support support is already available in Debian unstable
> for binutils, linux and gcc. (Otherwise, I would not have come as far as
> glibc.) Once glibc is in place, work can proceed on the Debian side.
> guile, libatomic-ops, libffi, libgpg-error and nspr ususally need a
> little upstream support. dpkg, gmp, openssl, and perl usually need
> Debian-specific changes. I'd recommend looking into libatomic-ops and
> libffi early. The other packages are usually simple.
>
> The aim of rebootstrap is to create a package set for essential +
> build-essential using cross builds without using any qemu. Beyond that
> point, you'd switch to native building. Unless real hardware is
> available, you'd need qemu after the reboostrap phase. Whether you use
> full or user emulation is your choice, but I guess that you can speed up
> builds using user emulation, because it allows you to mix and match
> binaries. When you upstream your qemu is also your choice.
>
> Please get in touch with me once a suitable glibc is packaged for Debian
> unstable or experimental. Please use debian-cross at lists.debian.org or
> irc.oftc.net #debian-bootstrap at that point. Alternatively, package a
> glibc locally (like Arnd did).

Following up as ARC glibc port was merged upstream in 2.32. Can we now give
rebootstrap a spin for ARC Debian enablement.

Thx,
-Vineet