Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Ashish]

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Hi  Bruce / Christopher ,

- Can you share comments / plan ahead of merging RPI-4 Xen patches on dunfell ?
Currently most of patches from Chris are being on master branch .
And since Dunfell is an LTS , are there any plan to have Xen on Raspberry Pi4 on Dunfell branch ?

- Or we will be having these release patches from "Gatesgarth" release.
This can help us to understand in a better way.

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Re: [meta-virtualization] Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Bruce Ashfield]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 7:48 AM Ashish <ashishm@mvista.com> wrote:
>
> Hi  Bruce / Christopher ,
>
> - Can you share comments / plan ahead of merging RPI-4 Xen patches on dunfell ?
>   Currently most of patches from Chris are being on master branch .
>    And since Dunfell is an LTS , are there any plan to have Xen on Raspberry Pi4 on Dunfell branch ?
>

Unfortunately no. These are functionality patches, so they aren't
appropriate to backport to dunfell. They are also not being tested
against equivalent dunfell branches from the other repos, so
backporting would be non-trivial.

> - Or we will be having these release patches from "Gatesgarth" release.
>   This can help us to understand in a better way.
>

Since they are in master now, they will be part of gatesgarth.

Bruce

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-- 
- Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await
thee at its end
- "Use the force Harry" - Gandalf, Star Trek II

Re: [meta-virtualization] Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Christopher Clark]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 5:29 AM Bruce Ashfield <bruce.ashfield@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 7:48 AM Ashish <ashishm@mvista.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi  Bruce / Christopher ,
> >
> > - Can you share comments / plan ahead of merging RPI-4 Xen patches on dunfell ?
> >   Currently most of patches from Chris are being on master branch .
> >    And since Dunfell is an LTS , are there any plan to have Xen on Raspberry Pi4 on Dunfell branch ?
>
> Unfortunately no. These are functionality patches, so they aren't
> appropriate to backport to dunfell. They are also not being tested
> against equivalent dunfell branches from the other repos, so
> backporting would be non-trivial.

It's been pretty educational getting Xen up and running on this device
with Yocto lately, and I am sympathetic to the interest in getting it
to work with dunfell, since it is the LTS. Part of the motivation for
doing this work is the hope that people are interested in using it!
I am aware of others who have expressed interest in a backport of the
current Xen release to dunfell too. Perhaps if there is sufficient
interest from contributors willing to provide resources to the project
to cover the necessary testing and support, there might be some way
forward.

One issue that I hadn't foreseen that would affect putting it into a
LTS branch is the force-pushing that occurs on the Raspberry Pi Linux
kernel repository branches, which can break the build when the
expected commit is no longer available in the upstream branch. With
that kernel, unfortunately 5.4 is not declared stable yet. I also just
discovered that there is some existing Raspberry Pi 4 hardware support
in the meta-yocto-bsp layer -- ie. bcm-2xxx-rpi4 -- so I'm looking
into what it would take to get the Yocto Linux 5.4 kernel (ie.
linux-yocto) to work instead of the linux-raspberrypi kernel. I don't
have it working yet, but hopefully it is close, and that kernel is
likely going to be a better fit for Xen on R-Pi4 on any stable branch
in Yocto.

> > - Or we will be having these release patches from "Gatesgarth" release.
> >   This can help us to understand in a better way.
>
> Since they are in master now, they will be part of gatesgarth.

Excellent :-)

Christopher

Re: Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Ashish]

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Hi Chris / Bruce ,

- Thanks for pointers  as it added more clarity w.r.t process .

- w.r.t " interest from contributors willing to provide resources to the project .."
I can check with team coming weeks .
I could get some dedicated time being assigned here ,but i can confirm back only after discussing with my team

- With some initial pointers , i would like to contribute here .
Do we have any pending task-list / weekly calls where i could understand more about process here .
( I come from driver development background so idea is to get an understanding of things here & ramp-up )

Any comments / feedback / pointers would be helpful .

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Re: [meta-virtualization] Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Christopher Clark]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 9:37 PM Ashish <ashishm@mvista.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Chris / Bruce ,
>
> - Thanks for pointers  as it added more clarity w.r.t process .
>
> - w.r.t " interest from contributors willing to provide resources to the project .."
> I can check with team coming weeks .
> I could get some dedicated time being assigned here ,but i can confirm back only after discussing with my team
>
> - With some initial pointers , i would like to contribute here .
> Do we have any pending task-list / weekly calls where i could understand more about process here .
> ( I come from driver development background so idea is to get an understanding of things here & ramp-up )
>
> Any comments / feedback / pointers would be helpful .

These are slides by David Reyna and Nicolas Dechesne from a
presentation delivered at the Embedded Linux Conference (virtual
event) in June this year. They describe the new LTS release process in
Yocto and the policy for handling changes to components:
https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/ossna2020/34/Yocto%20Project%20LTS%20ELC%20NA%20June%202020.pdf
obtained from:
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/embedded-linux-conference-north-america/program/schedule/

Here is a video with similar slides presented by Nicolas Dechesne
slightly earlier this year on the same LTS topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5cDsEQnjV4

It describes the strict rules about managing the release branches. All
changes must go into master first, and it states that general version
upgrades of components (such as Xen here) are not eligible for
admission to the LTS branch (ie. dunfell).

That said, if you look at the file: conf/layer.conf in the
meta-virtualization repository, you can see that although this layer
is being developed now for the gatesgarth release, it currently
indicates compatibility with the dunfell branch. If you assemble a
dunfell build tree of the other repositories, and meta-virtualization
from master (switching to gatesgarth once it is released), you should
be able to test using the updated meta-virtualization components with
the dunfell stable repositories for other components. If you are able
to test, exercise and validate this combination ahead of the next
release, there may be the opportunity to fix any compatibility issues
arising that are identified and understood prior to the next release
being issued.

For task-list and community calls which could be helpful for QA
issues, there is a Monthly Technical Call, and a Weekly Triage
Meeting, facilitated by Stephen Jolley, the Yocto Project Program
Manager.
Details of Bug Triage are here:
https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Bug_Triage
Call details:
https://www.yoctoproject.org/public-virtual-meetings/

I would recommend subscribing to the Yocto mailing list if you haven't already.

Thanks for your interest!

Christopher



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Re: Comment / Feedback to include RPI-4 patches on DUNFELL branch

[Ashish]

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Thanks Christopher for pointers.
Will go through the link shared.

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