bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Jookia]

Hey there,

I'm considering seeing if I can get GuixSD to work on an ARM board of mine. I'd
like to know what the main blockers are that I'll need to pass. From what I've
read and understood, the reason there's no ARM port now is lack of work and
reliance on GRUB. Assuming I bootstrap and set up a u-boot package for my
specific board, what else would I need to do?

Cheers,
Jookia.

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Sat, 16 Jan 2016 21:27:26 +1100
Jookia <166291@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey there,
> 
> I'm considering seeing if I can get GuixSD to work on an ARM board of mine. I'd
> like to know what the main blockers are that I'll need to pass. From what I've
> read and understood, the reason there's no ARM port now is lack of work and
> reliance on GRUB. Assuming I bootstrap and set up a u-boot package for my
> specific board, what else would I need to do?
> 
> Cheers,
> Jookia.
> 

According to the documentation, the arm board needs to be armv7 or later, and
support hard float, thumb-2, NEON, and support the EABI hard-float ABI.

I don't know a lot about setting up arm boards, but if I understand it
correctly, u-boot -> kernel -> guixsd image, where u-boot and the kernel get
updated in tandem.

I wish you much luck with getting GuixSD to run on an arm board, I think many
of us are looking forward to this working.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
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bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jookia <166291@gmail.com> skribis:

> I'm considering seeing if I can get GuixSD to work on an ARM board of mine. I'd
> like to know what the main blockers are that I'll need to pass. From what I've
> read and understood, the reason there's no ARM port now is lack of work and
> reliance on GRUB. Assuming I bootstrap and set up a u-boot package for my
> specific board, what else would I need to do?

I think getting a working bootloader and kernel are the main blockers
(the current ‘linux-libre’ package might work already, or it might need
more tweaks; I don’t think anyone has tried to boot it on ARM.)

I would prefer if we could use GRUB with ARM support¹ if possible.
Using U-Boot would be OK if GRUB doesn’t work as expected, but it’s more
work; namely, a module equivalent to (gnu system grub) would need to be
made, and (gnu system) would need to be made independent of GRUB.

At any rate, GuixSD on ARM would be very nice!

Ludo’.

¹ https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUB (GRUB 2.02 should
  work)

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Jookia]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 09:39:24PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Jookia <166291@gmail.com> skribis:
> I think getting a working bootloader and kernel are the main blockers
> (the current ‘linux-libre’ package might work already, or it might need
> more tweaks; I don’t think anyone has tried to boot it on ARM.)

Ah, it shouldn't be that much of a problem then. Famous last words, but I guess
I'll be doing some hacking to get GuixSD on ARM then! No promises. :)

> I would prefer if we could use GRUB with ARM support¹ if possible.
> Using U-Boot would be OK if GRUB doesn’t work as expected, but it’s more
> work; namely, a module equivalent to (gnu system grub) would need to be
> made, and (gnu system) would need to be made independent of GRUB.

I agree GRUB with ARM support would be better, though from my experience it's
still in its infancy. I've managed to get GRUB executing on my Novena board but
I've still had issues having it actually boot anything, eventually I gave up
since my use case was solved by something else. So unfortunately until that's
ironed out (and supported on more boards), I think U-Boot will have to make do
for now. I suppose it's also good hygiene to support more booting methods too.

> At any rate, GuixSD on ARM would be very nice!
> Ludo’.

I much appreciate the reply and sorry for opening a bug report on this rather
than posting to -devel or help-. I'll probably have a ton of bug reports and
patches down the line as I get GuixSD on to my T400, so I'm now drinking from
the firehose of all three mailing lists. :)

Cheers,
Jookia.

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Jookia <166291@gmail.com> skribis:

> I much appreciate the reply and sorry for opening a bug report on this rather
> than posting to -devel or help-. I'll probably have a ton of bug reports and
> patches down the line as I get GuixSD on to my T400, so I'm now drinking from
> the firehose of all three mailing lists. :)

Heh.  :-)  Don’t hesitate to ask if you have troubles or anything;
everyone will be happy to help that effort!

Ludo’.

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello,

Jookia <166291@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm considering seeing if I can get GuixSD to work on an ARM board of mine. I'd
> like to know what the main blockers are that I'll need to pass. From what I've
> read and understood, the reason there's no ARM port now is lack of work and
> reliance on GRUB. Assuming I bootstrap and set up a u-boot package for my
> specific board, what else would I need to do?

According to [1] Guix 0.14 provides support for ARMv7.  So I would
consider this bug fixed.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/blog/2017/porting-guixsd-to-armv7/

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761  070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

bug#22384: Requirements for an ARM port?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:

> Jookia <166291@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I'm considering seeing if I can get GuixSD to work on an ARM board of mine. I'd
>> like to know what the main blockers are that I'll need to pass. From what I've
>> read and understood, the reason there's no ARM port now is lack of work and
>> reliance on GRUB. Assuming I bootstrap and set up a u-boot package for my
>> specific board, what else would I need to do?
>
> According to [1] Guix 0.14 provides support for ARMv7.  So I would
> consider this bug fixed.
>
> [1] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/blog/2017/porting-guixsd-to-armv7/

Indeed.  As the post mentions, GuixSD has not been “ported to ARM” but
rather ported to a specific ARM board—but that’s the way it is.

Thanks for going through the bug backlog!

Ludo’.