[yocto] meta-sunxi maintained?

Wed May 29 01:17:43 PDT 2019

Hi Dimitris,

On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 10:03 AM Dimitris Tassopoulos <dimtass at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Marek,
>
> I see (and now remember) that there is a recipe for libgles for Mali400 and A10/20.
> Are you interested for this architecture or newer (like H2, H3, H5) ?
>
> I can only make a wild guess that maybe because the driver is a bit old, then if you
> try to build new recipes then there might be some issues.
>
> This also is the difference between the layers that I've mentioned before. The meta-sunxi
> is clean and raw layer. Meaning that you get more flexibility to add/remove things and
> also have a more generic layer. On the other hand, the other layer is not really configurable
> and flexible in the same depth but it takes the full armbian distro and wraps it. So, if the
> distro works, then the layer should work only with those components (of course you can
> do modifications). That's the difference in the approach I meant in the previous mail.
>
> I don't have any A10/20 hardware to test, but I could spin a build and look at the errors you get.
> If you send my your local conf file and your environment setup and build command I ca
> trigger a build and see if there's anything I can help with.
Thanks it will be really helpful. Basically I'm doing same as
described here:
https://github.com/linux-sunxi/meta-sunxi/issues/240#issuecomment-496410993
Looking at sunxi-mali more devices should be supported:
COMPATIBLE_MACHINE = "(sun4i|sun5i|sun7i|sun8i)"
>
> Regards,
> Dimitris

BR,

marek
>
> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 9:39 AM Belisko Marek <marek.belisko at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Dimitris,
>>
>> On Wed, May 29, 2019 at 9:03 AM Dimitris Tassopoulos <dimtass at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi Marek,
>> >
>> > that's correct. I have a branch though which I've started to experiment and add support for Mali. I didn't finished because I've tried to do this by myself from the scratch and soon I've hit a wall. Nevertheless, I've done the same for the rk3399 for nanopi-neo4 and during this process I've learned a lot on how to do it with some help from other people from the open source scene. The graphics stack was too complicated for me in the beginning.
>> You can maybe look to meta-sunxi there is sunxi-mali driver +
>> libraries which will add support for that. When I've set that package
>> to PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/gles2 I get issues with compilation
>> gtk3+ and others. I've spend 2 hours looking and trying yesterday but
>> without any success. Also pls look at this communication:
>> https://github.com/linux-sunxi/meta-sunxi/issues/144 (looks like we
>> can use opensource drivers + libs later). Thanks.
>> >
>> > Therefore now that I feel much more confident with it I'm going to re-try and finish with my branch. Armbian does have support, so I'll try to stick to the Armbian backend for maintenance reasons.
>> >
>> > I hope that this will be rather easy, because the dri driver should already be there, so the only thing I believe is needed is the blobs and to create symlinks for the various so libs to that blob.
>> >
>> > Anyway, I'll try to do that also. In the meantime I will also wait a bit to see if that merge between those two layers is possible and doable, which will help to short the time and effort to do that.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Dimitris
>>
>> BR,
>>
>> marek
>> >
>> > Belisko Marek <marek.belisko at gmail.com> schrieb am Mi., 29. Mai 2019, 08:37:
>> >>
>> >> Hi Dimitris,
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 1:07 PM Dimitris Tassopoulos <dimtass at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > Hi Enrico,
>> >> >
>> >> > I'm totally positive to any possibility for such integration. Personally, that was the first thing I've tried to do before I start this layer, but I've failed as it got really complex and the overhead was too much after some point (at least for me). If you have look it's actually a mix of meta-sunxi and armbian, but I had to remove or change many stuff to fit the armbian in the layer.
>> >> >
>> >> > If you have time to have a look to my layer and you think that such kind of integration is possible and can be done in a more easy way, then from my side I'm all in.
>> >> > I believe that re-using the armbian patches is easier as it makes maintenance much easier, there are more supported SBCs and also there is much more testing involved in armbian and frequent updates fix those bugs.
>> >> I did check your layer and it seems that you're not using sunxi-mali
>> >> for opengl HW acceleration only mesa so SW rendering? Thanks.
>> >> >
>> >> > Please consider it and I can help as much as I can and my time allows for that integration.
>> >> >
>> >> > Regards,
>> >> > Dimitris
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> Marek
>> >> >
>> >> > On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 12:56 PM Enrico <ebutera at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 12:06 PM Dimitris Tassopoulos <dimtass at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > >
>> >> >> > > I was thinking about this also, too. The only reason is that in meta-sunxi they do a great job and they keep their layer clean, which is great I think. The other layers are just based on the armbian distro, which is a lot different, but for me it was much easier to integrate their patches, patching scripts and bootloader scripts to a Yocto layer. That way the only thing I do is that from time to time I just integrate their new patches and that's it. There's no development in the layer is just re-use of the armbian work and a wrapper around it. Therefore, it's hard, even no doable to put those different architectures together. But definitely that decision also bothered me a lot before I create the layer and I also don't like time to be spend on the same thing from different people. Nevertheless, from my point of view I couldn't find a way to put those things together. I've tried but I couldn't do it.
>> >> >> > >
>> >> >> > > Therefore, it was easier for me to do it the way I've done it. And after all, although it doesn't seem right, at the same time this is the beauty of the open source. I think the layers are just incompatible in the way that they are do things. Also it's not bad to have alternatives.
>> >> >> > >
>> >> >> > > Sunxi is a great community and I believe many of the armbian patches are coming from there. Others not. Of course, having them all together would be nice. But I don't think that it's possible because of the different approach.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> It would be great to integrate all those different layers in
>> >> >> meta-sunxi,the main problem is that usually they come with their own
>> >> >> bootloader/kernel/etc.... so you have to *maintain* all these
>> >> >> different configurations.
>> >> >> Infact in the past i refused to do such things because i didn't have
>> >> >> the time to maintain all those different versions, it was just easier
>> >> >> to support what was already in mainline uboot/kernel.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> But of course if someone wants to do it then it's welcome, the worst
>> >> >> thing that can happen is that once an arch gets unmaintained it will
>> >> >> be removed.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> One thing that can be done anyway is to have those external layers
>> >> >> linked in the readme, so at least people will know they exist.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Enrico