<LordKalma>
gamiee, the TLDR of the anti-buildroot crew is the (very resoable) argument that linux is the same everywhere. There is no "embedded linux". It's a board that runs an OS, why is it special?
<LordKalma>
*reasonable
<apritzel>
gamiee: yeah, I am not against the idea of building a small userland, but this mixing up of kernel, config, possibly firmware is just ... embedded
<LordKalma>
hahaha at least buildroot is understandable
<LordKalma>
I tried looking at yocto
<LordKalma>
I get some of the advantages of yocto
<LordKalma>
but it's just... wow
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<gamiee>
apritzel: ah makes sense, thanks for explanation
<gamiee>
LordKalma: 100% Yocto was sooo complicated for me, so I decided to use buildroot instead, and I'm really satisfied with the results.
<gamiee>
(this reminds me that buildroot still don't support crust :( )
<LordKalma>
and yeah, buildroot is like *everything* shoved together
<LordKalma>
very not unix-y
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<LordKalma>
current the buildroot we're using for working on the X6100 downloads a linaro toolchain, configures the kernel, u-boot, has the dts, configures a bunch of init.d scripts, adds the lcd panel driver as a kernel module, configures sshd
<LordKalma>
so yeah...
<LordKalma>
ah, and it creates an sdcard.img :)
<apritzel>
in particular I am not a fan of "my board is special" idea: from a quick browse through the board/ directory it seems that all sunxi boards are actually *almost* the same in there
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<apritzel>
LordKalma: that touches several gripes I have:
<apritzel>
linaro toolchain: it's not 2014 anymore, proper distros provide readily packaged cross-compiler packages: apt-get install crossbuild-essential-arm64
<apritzel>
configures the kernel: that sounds daunting, I wonder how it know how to do that. Distros spent a lot of time and effort in figuring that out
<LordKalma>
buildroot can use system provided, can build gcc from source, or use a toolchain of your choice. Choosing linaro was an idea from my russian partner... didn't even know that was a thing.. I just let it build from source...
<LordKalma>
you provide the kernel defconfig
<apritzel>
the Linaro toolchain was a good thing to have back then, but it's mostly obsolete now
<LordKalma>
he did say he has 15 years buildroot experience
<LordKalma>
maybe that's why then
<apritzel>
yeah, I'd say it shows ;-)
<LordKalma>
well, it's faster than letting buildroot build gcc... so there's that
<LordKalma>
(and yes, I could use OS provided toolchain)
<LordKalma>
building gcc requires bootstraping so you have to build it twice, it's soooo boring
<apritzel>
distro toolchains are properly integrated in your distro, allow painless userland compilation, and you can just install libraries like you would do natively
<LordKalma>
yap
<apritzel>
bootlin and kernel.org provide easy to use bare metal cross-compilers binaries, if you need the latest version
<apritzel>
LordKalma: and just to be clear: you can of course use buildroot in whatever configuration, but the idea of "upstreaming board support to it" sounds wrong
<LordKalma>
I know you're not "judging" in the gatekeeping sense
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<LordKalma>
and I totally buy your arguments
<LordKalma>
for me it's just a "I don't know anything, plz do it for me"
<apritzel>
the selection of boards in there looks random to me, though there could be one sunxi-32 and one sunxi-64 board, if that helps people
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<apritzel>
yeah, I see that point
<LordKalma>
but yeah, it totally is a "do this for THIS board" thing
<LordKalma>
which is too restrictive most of the time
<LordKalma>
in that sense, yocto is better
<LordKalma>
because you can just layer things
<LordKalma>
but the layering model takes 3 years of training and documentation is thin
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* maz
thinks: who needs buildroot when you can have Debian... and leaves the room.
<LordKalma>
well, people wrote armbian
<LordKalma>
so I guess debian wasn't enough?
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* apritzel
totally agrees with maz, but stays in the room ;-)
<gamiee>
apritzel & mas : what is the alternative, when I need Kernel and userspace as smallest as possible?
<smaeul>
apritzel: do you have a branch somewhere of accepted patches for your next U-Boot PR? I'd like to rebase my patches before I (re)send, since several of the Kconfig-related patches are going to conflict
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<apritzel>
smaeul: I was planning on sending a fix PR this week, I will push to sunxi/master later today
<apritzel>
once this is through, I wanted to start with next, with the DE2 and AXP patches, plus probably more of your pending ones already (but minus the Kconfig series)
<apritzel>
gamiee: buildroot is probably the best for userland then, and then you probably need a tailored kernel config, which involves some work and testing
<gamiee>
apritzel: yeah, that's what I am doing, but to other side, tailoring own kernel config is painful :D
<apritzel>
gamiee: in my experience going down from defconfig (de-selecting other platforms & PCI & ACPI & stuff) does not bring you down too much
<apritzel>
I had massive savings (3-4 MB arm64 kernel) when starting from tinyconfig, but you then have to select everything manually
<apritzel>
gamiee: yes, it is painful, and I think people underestimate the efforts it requires
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<apritzel>
my position is: if you tailor a config this way, then compiling a kernel and putting that into an SD image file are the least of your problems
<gamiee>
apritzel: haha, you're absolutely right! I thought that I will have different problems... But tailoring Linux defconfig was the biggest one. It took me few days to find out that HDMI output doesn't work because CONFIG_FB (or other option) is missing in sunxi config.... :D
<apritzel>
gamiee: yeah, that's the challenge. It's relatively straight-forward to get a serial only kernel boot into an initrd, but adding WiFi, Ethernet, and especially graphics is quite a task
<apritzel>
gamiee: and other than experience or asking here in the channel I don't know of any general guides that would make this a mechanic or scriptable exercise
<apritzel>
gamiee: one way could be to somewhat bisect between a working (but big) config and your tiny version
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<gamiee>
apritzel: this is exactly what I did. I expected that "sunxi_defconfig" (armhf) will be that "big config" where everything works. It was not. So I compared big Armbian sunxi armhf defconfig (there is nice tool for that in linux scripts), and I was going step by step, trying various options related to GPU (keywords like GPU, DRM, KMS, FB, etc.)
<gamiee>
And yes, there is not much information about tailoring own config, so it was all about my improvising and ideas how to find what I'm missing :D
<apritzel>
yeah, tailoring your config is by design nothing for the faint of heart. So you either bite the bullet and work through, or leave that to the professionals (distros, defconfig)
<apritzel>
gamiee: feel free to list your findings and hints in some Wiki page, though, to give people some breadcrumbs to follow
<apritzel>
gamiee: another tip: I use a separate build directory, and have the .config there under git revision control (so separate from the kernel source .git)
<apritzel>
gamiee: that helps not only bisecting, but also to keep track of changes and being able to switch back to older kernel version with a equivalent config
<apritzel>
and you can have several feature branches, so one for defconfig, one for tiny, one for "all sunxi"=y, and so on
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<gamiee>
apritzel: yeah, planning to write up something, just I'm waiting for new wiki server to be live
<gamiee>
That git .config bissecting is really nice trick, thanks for sharing!
<apritzel>
gamiee: don't want to take away your excuse, but you can edit any time. The "old" server under the canonical URL is up and running, and all edits will be preserved. It's the new (minima) server that will lose its memory
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<upnix>
What is the best way to include console output in the wiki? I could link to a Gist, or just paste the fairly long file in the Wiki page. It doesn't look like txt file types are allowed to be uploaded.
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<LordKalma>
Re: <apritzel> gamiee: yeah, that's the challenge. It's relatively straight-forward to get a serial only kernel boot into an initrd, but adding WiFi, Ethernet, and especially graphics is quite a task
<LordKalma>
yeah in the x6100 buildroot when we managed the display driver, my russian colleague wanted to make wifi and bt work, plus usb-otg and since the board has usb-otg, make is a "generic" computer
<apritzel>
Upnix: that is a good question, indeed it would be very helpful to host bootlogs and embed them in the page, ideally with an option to hide (fold/collapse) them
<apritzel>
upnix: and thanks for putting up the wiki page