SBR600 Potential Projects

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Revision as of 14:24, 17 September 2010 by Chris Tyler (talk | contribs) (Fedora-ARM Projects)
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Incomplete List
Additions are being made to this list. Please check back later for additional potential projects.

Introduction

This is a list of potential projects related to the SBR600 course that need people.

Students: If you'd like to work on one of these, move the chosen project to the Project List and create a page for your work based on the Sample Project template.

Open Source Community Members: We welcome your recommendations for potential projects. Please create an account on this Wiki and create a description for your proposed project below. Please list your contact info (just an IRC or FAS2 name is OK) as well as links to any related web pages as Resources for the proposed project. (Questions? Ask Chris Tyler).

Sample Project

This is a sample project stub. You can use the template for Sample Project in order to create a project page for one of the stubs below. This is how you 'sign-up' for a project.

NOTE: if someone has already created the project page, speak to this person and see if you can join them. If so, simply add your name to the Project Leader(s) page. Otherwise, you can become a contributor later.

Fedora-ARM Projects

To Thumb or Not To Thumb?

The core of all ARM processors are designs licensed from ARM Ltd. There are several different architecture versions; Fedora-ARM targets the armv5tel architecture as a "lowest common denominator" among current ARM chips. This architecture supports a thumb instruction set, which uses 16-bit instructions instead of 32-bit instructions, leading to a higher code density.

Fedora-ARM does not use thumb. The purpose of this project is to discover whether thumb provides any significant savings in terms of code size, whether programs compiled to thumb execute more quickly or more slowly than non-thumb programs on common ARM processors, whether a thumb compilation takes more or less time than non-thumb, and whether there are any other factors that would influence the decision to support thumb. Ultimately, this project should make a recommendation on the use of the thumb instruction set for the Fedora-ARM secondary architecture.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Supporting Architectures Above armv5tel

The armv5tel architecture version is supported by some common devices such as the Marvell Feroceon processors used in most plug computers. However, later versions of the architecture support advanced features, and using armv5tel code on those processors may result in suboptimal performance.

This project will research ways that Fedora-ARM could support higher processor versions effectively without recompiling the entire Fedora package universe -- for example, by providing an armv7 + hardfp glibc and kernel. This involves performance testing across multiple devices.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Fedora-ARM Dogfood - Koji Hub

The Fedora-ARM koji system uses HongKong, an x86_64 system, as the Koji hub, along with a group of ARM builders.

Ideally, it would be nice to prove the ability of the Fedora-ARM project to be entirely self-hosting by using an ARM system as the Koji hub (this is sometimes called "Eating your own dogfood" in the industry). This project involves configuring the OpenRD-Client system as Koji hub.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Set up Nagios monitoring for the ARM farm

Nagios is a system monitoring tool; setting it up for the Fedora-ARM build farm will make it easier to get timely notification of system issues.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Set up Puppet

Puppet is a tool for managing configuration files. It should be set up on the Fedora-ARM build farm so that configuration files can easily be deployed across the entire farm.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Set up FUNC

Func is the Fedora Unified Network Controller -- a way of controlling a group of machines en masse. We need FUNC set up for the Fedora-ARM build farm.

Initial contacts: ctyler, PaulW

Fedora Projects

fedpkg Test Suite

fedpkg is a new Fedora packager tool written by Jesse Keating; it's one of the main command-line tools that a packager will use. It needs a test suite, so that as new features are added, regressions can be detected.

Initial contacts: Oxf13

Koji Setup Documentation

Koji documentation is obsolete and needs a major overhaul. This project involves reading the current documentation, updating and editing it, and testing it by setting up a Koji system.

Initial contacts: ctyler, dgilmore

Fedora-Mozilla Projects

Repository Setup for Mozilla Nightlies and Betas

Many web developers want access to the latest Firefox pre-releases, including the nightly builds and beta releases. Mozilla's build team wants to make these accessible as parallel-installable binaries, released through a Fedora-compatible repository. This project involves setting this up.

Subprojects:

  • Build configuration for the RPM files.
  • Repository configuration RPMs.
  • Getting SELinux to work with the nightlies.

Initial contacts: ctyler, armenzg