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Date:      Sun, 15 Sep 2013 12:19:45 -0600
From:      Douglas Beattie <beattidp@ieee.org>
To:        freebsd-arm <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Building core-specific ARM ports with QEMU
Message-ID:  <B13141E0-BB3E-4362-8D79-E8E93EB6BA13@ieee.org>

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I'm still researching the issue of an ARM ports repository, whether it's =
a
private one for internal use, or eventually hosted on the Internet.

One question I have is: if Tinderbox is for building the kernel, what =
type
of automated build tools (with reporting/tracking), if any, are =
available for
the FreeBSD ports?

Anyway, here's my thought:

I have access to a dual-Xeon Proliant server, which I can provision any
reasonable number of FreeBSD VMs (virtual machines) within.

Many of you probably know of QEMU, the open-source processor emulator.
Using the executable 'qemu-system-arm' to simulate certain ARM cores,
dedicated ARM systems could run and build ports (or attempt to, and =
report
their result, and any failures).

Taking a look at the documentation, this strategy could provide a =
variety of
different ARM cores for building FreeBSD ports.
  http://qemu.weilnetz.de/qemu-doc.html#ARM-System-emulator

  - ARM Integrator/CP board emulation supports cores including
    ARM926E, ARM1026E, ARM946E, ARM1136 or Cortex-A8 CPU

  - Other board emulations support cores including ARM925T,
    ARMv5TE, Cortex-M3, ARM11MPCore, and Cortex-A9 MPCore

As I mentioned previously, I used to boot debian-arm kernel this way, =
with disk,
network, and optional NFS access. (More links, =
http://wiki.qemu.org/Manual )

My reasoning here is that the effort to make solid ports for certain =
cores and board
emulations will pay for itself in the ability to build and validate =
FreeBSD ports for
ARM variants, built in parallel, by multiple virtual machines, in the =
cloud.

So, the big question I have at the moment is: which of these board =
emulations (if any),
and which ARM cores are currently supported to boot from?

--
Douglas Beattie
http://www.hytherion.com/beattidp/




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