Re: [microblaze-uclinux] Change to list policy

[John Williams <john.williams@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Antoine,

On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 12:48 AM, Antoine Calando <acalando@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>> Hi folks,
>>
>> For those who missed it, MicroBlaze got merged into Linus's 2.6.30-rc2
>> tree yesterday!  This is big news, and a big thanks to Michal for the
>> great work he did on LKML to get it sheparded in, and thanks also to
>> Xilinx who supported us to make this happen.
>
> Can you please provide more details on this merge:
>
> With which base was merged the official kernel? The one from Petalogix SVN,
> or may be from Xilinx git? A mix of both? BTW what was the differences
> between these two inital branches? The Xilinx version seems much more recent,
> but is it as well maintained as the Petalogix one?

Hmm, where to start.  About 12 months ago, Michal took the PetaLogix
2.6.20 SVN kernel, and reved it up to 2.6.27 (At the time), plus a
bunch of work replacing the older Kconfig.auto with Device Tree
architecture, as used in PowerPC arch.

We had an attempt at mainline push then, but weren't adequately
resourced to really give it the push it needed, so we backed away.

So, the tree that is merged has of course roots from our 2.6.20 tree,
but has had a lot of cleanup, and uses device trees as the main
platform configuration technology.

It's relation to git.xilinx.com MicroBlaze support is less clear, and
indeed now that MicroBlaze is merged upstream, git.xilinx.com will
start to reflect that fact, plus any local patches, drivers etc added
by Xilinx.

We are plugged right in to Xilinx's open source strategy so you can
expect to see some real convergence there over the coming months.

In time, there will also be a new PetaLinux release that bases off
this mainline kernel.  As you can imagine, there's some significant
re-engineering required on our part to achieve this, due to a number
of modernisations and changes in the mainline tree.

> How is going to evolve Petalinux and Linux kernel repositories from now?
> Will all changes be reported on a regular basis between each one?

I can';t speak for xilinx on the management of git.xilinx.com, but as
I said above I expect to see some real convergence there.  Most of
what will differ in git.xilnc.com vs upstream will probably be drivers
before they are merged, more than core arch support.

> BTW, I have some similiar questions for GCC Microblaze:
> Who provides the support for mb? I assumed until now that the Petalinux
> toolchain is based on Xilinx git compiler branch and uClinux linker
> scripts/utilities. I am correct?

Currently core gcc work for MB is done by Xilinx, and PetaLogix builds
Linux-ready toolchains for distribution with PetaLinux.

> Is it planned to merge it with official GCC tree?

I've been discussing this very idea up and down various levels of
management at Xilinx the last week, and certainly they recognise the
value.  We are now looking at ways to make that happen.

> Those are many questions, I hope the answers will clarify my understanding of
> the Microblaze developers community.

Hope it clears things up.

Cheers,

John
-- 
John Williams, PhD, B.Eng, B.IT
PetaLogix - Linux Solutions for a Reconfigurable World
w: www.petalogix.com  p: +61-7-30090663  f: +61-7-30090663
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