Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 07:33:12 -0800 From: Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com> To: Dave Hayes <dave@jetcafe.org> Cc: freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: announcing the availability of packages for the Arm architecture Message-ID: <1D4ECD72-D01D-48D3-B837-735176CC49D3@kientzle.com> In-Reply-To: <5097263F.5090802@jetcafe.org> References: <CANuCnH_pKuUPhYe-AQ6MpK_XXPSdpft5zhQzEjFBSpfWAPRqKA@mail.gmail.com> <1351606727.1120.17.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <5097263F.5090802@jetcafe.org>
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On Nov 4, 2012, at 6:36 PM, Dave Hayes wrote: > On 10/30/12 07:18, Ian Lepore wrote: >> All in all, I have the impression that not many people "use" freebsd = on >> arm at all. >=20 > Just getting to the point of "using" it is quite time intensive. I ran = out of time trying to get my dreamplug to where I want it. These issues = were in my way (this was some time ago, check the list for dates): >=20 > - install requires non-trivial patches and kernel config There are a few people working on build systems to simplify this. My scripts work pretty much "out-of-the-box" for RaspberryPi and BeagleBone now and should be easily extensible to other platforms. > - building ports on the device itself is dog slow (I likely need to = put a swap partition on a usb stick to do that since the machine has no = swap in the first place) FreeBSD ports team is now building packages for ARM. > - no qemu support to use faster machines to emulate arm to build ports > - cross compiling ports is too dangerous A lot of people are looking at cross-compiling. I think we'll see some progress there in the next few months. > ... most developers here seem to be on -current (I believe this is = version 10),=85 The inexpensive new boards coming out are only supported on -CURRENT right now. > Maybe the Raspberry PI estrus will change that?=20 I think it could. One big barrier to FreeBSD on arm has simply been that each new board only attracts a few developers. And each new board requires new drivers, new boot sequencing, etc, etc. It's an immense fragmentation problem. I've been trying to talk up FreeBSD-on-RaspberryPi since I think that could attract enough of a user base to really become a mature platform.=20 Even if you prefer a "more beefy" system like the DreamPlug or PandaBoard or =85 , consider getting a RaspberryPi as well and tinkering with that for a little bit. It's only $35. Tim
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