Fedora ARM Secondary Architecture
Introduction
Fedora Secondary Architecture
Fedora supports two primary architectures:
- i386 - 32-bit Intel/AMD-compatible
- x86_64 - 64-bit Intel/AMD-compatible
There are also a number of secondary archs:
- arm - A widely-used, low-power processor family commonly used for embedded and mobile applications
- ia64 - Itanium
- pa-risc - HP Precision Architecture
- ppc - 32-bit Power PC
- ppc64 - 64-bit Power PC
- s390 - IBM mainframes (including z90 and z9)
- sparc - Sun RISC architecture
The ARM architecture is increasingly important, but there's a lot more that could be done in terms of update frequency, number of packages successfully built, transparency of process, and integration with the other Fedora build processes.
ARM Processors
ARM chips are the most popular CPU produced -- approximately 1.6 billion are being made each year. These are being sold under a number of different brand names (ARM, StrongARM, Armada, Cortex, OMAP, Sheeva, Snapdragon, XScale) by a number of different manufacturers. Most of these are going into cellphones, but hundreds of millions are being used in other devices such as routers, NAS boxes, embedded controllers, tablets, and netbooks.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computers, model XO-1.75, use an ARM processor. Since Fedora is used on the XO units, having a reliable ARM build of Fedora will become increasingly important.
Plan
Initial Plan
We're going to set up a Koji build system for ARM. Initially this will be based on the CDOT system HongKong. Initial ARM builders will use QEMU emulation, which will be replaced by ARM hardware when it arrives.
Current Tasks
| Task | Person | Status | Wiki Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial mock tests on ARM | Everyone | 80% | Initial Mock Compilation Tests |
| Research and create image for F12 on OpenRD-Client | |||
| NFS setup - HongKong to VMs | |||
| Networking with NAT to connect OpenRD | |||
| Revise mock config and .repo files in release RPM | |||
| Build kernels natively and from SRPM | Chris Tyler | In progress | Kernels |
Completed Tasks
- Local mirror of ARM repositories
- David Cabral
- David Chisholm
- Daniel Gilloch
- Set of standing VMs running the ARM image in emulation
- Sadiki Latty
- Paul Whalen
- Arlene Daniel
- mock configuration repository for ARM
- Chris Tyler
Resources
Wiki Pages
- Fedora Project wiki