[Aakash-hackers] Bootstrapping for Aakash

Sun Feb 9 14:31:39 UTC 2014

Hello,

Quoting from multiple mails to avoid storm of mail replies.

Srikant <u.srikant.patnaik at gmail.com> writes:

> Hello all, Sorry for late. 
>
> Here are few updates. 
>
> 1) We welcome our new member Pranav. He is a engineering student,
> shares the same enthusiasm and passion. I have added him in alioth,
> and he already joined this mailing list. Somehow he is unable to
> create account on wiki.

Welcome Pranav!.

>
> 2) I have created a minimal lxde-core image, with Wifi/touch and basic
> utils. I have no idea how to host it on alioth or wiki, so will wait
> for your suggestions. Meanwhile its sitting on my google drive (200MB,
> xz compressed, not tested on other device)

Interesting. I would like to share some thoughts after I had a
discussion on #debian-mobile a week ago or so. You had asked about DE
environment and it looks like enlightenment does have mobile device
support so we can try that to get a more mobile device like feel. Due to
lack of time I myself couldn't explore this yet.

>>    Interesting. But to be honest I have no interest in the actual
>>    image you produced - what I find interesting is the choices you
>>    made in producing it: Better if you share source - i.e. the
>>    scripts (or other procedures) you used to produce the image.

> The github link which I shared has the detailed procedure. There is no
> script. I don't feel there is a need too, correct me if I'm wrong.

I did check the page and I've few comments here. I think you used Ubuntu
to bootstrap this image, there is nothing wrong I'm noticing it because
there is no package called *gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf* yet in Debian. The
cross compiler which can be installed in Debian is only from the
emdebian repo IIRC, I use thibgs repo at [1] and package available there
is *gcc-4.7-arm-linux-gnueabihf*. May be a line suggesting adding this
repo to the sources.lst if people using Debian want to bootstrap this
image is helpful.

Also let me clarify why Jonas asked about the script, the point is we
should have some way of always able to build things in a automated way
than repeating it every time we want to spin image for testing. Also
Jonas likes preparing image himself ;-).

Jonas did an effort to generalize this pure blending effort using
boxer[2] which is written using gnumake and due to bugs and due to
rigidity of make we started rewriting it using Perl[3]. Atleast [2] can
still be used directly with some effort and [3] isn't yet ready.

I'm mentioning about boxer here because I wanted to give idea of what
Jonas was talking about

(Jonas if I assumed something wrong here correct me ;-))

[1] http://emdebian.org/~thibg/repo/
[2] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/boxer.git;a=summary
[3] http://source.boxer.biks.dk/?p=boxer.git

> The reason is, U-boot and filesystem we make only once. We change the
> Kernel, that too, only once.

Here I want to point out few stuffs, I was exploring the feasibiity of
pure blending Debian for Aakash and found few blockers, one such blocker
I've updated on wiki is availability of Alwinner A13 board support in
Debian. Since Alwinner A13 support is not yet mainlined completely by
Sunxi project to Linux upstream we can't expect Debian to officially
provide a deb file.

i.e. sudo aptitude install linux-image-alwinner

(PS: I don't have required expertise to carry out mainlining efforts :-)
but if some one can then I'll be glad to help)

> Is there any tutorial/blog/video on alioth. Also, is there any
> beginner's guide/instructions for debian wiki.

Are you looking for Alioth help? if so [4] and Debian wiki is moinmoin
software some information which might be helpful is [5]

[4] https://wiki.debian.org/Alioth/ 
[5] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianWiki

>
> 3) Is it possible to edit wiki using restructredText or markdown?
> Meanwhile, I have created a branch in our github page
> https://github.com/androportal/linux-on-aakash/tree/debian with steps
> to follow. This page should be converted to debian wiki. So that we
> can all edit there.

You can simply create a page at
wiki.debian.org/DebianAakash/Installation or something more relevant by
going to that URL. Since that page doesn't exist you will get an option
to create it. 

>
> 4) Simplified specs of Aakash2 tablet :
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aakash_(tablet)
> Aakash2 hardware is loosely based A13-OLinuXino board. Schematics and
> component details can 
> be found https://github.com/androportal/OLINUXINO
>
> 5) Manoj is working on gslx680 touchscreen fix, and Sachin is
> exploring LIMA. Both of them are working part-time on these. 
>
> We will contact Olimex for sure and find out. 

As Jonas said we will be interested in their findings, so if they can
write down it on Debian wiki (preferred) or blog that will be helpful.

-- 
Vasudev Kamath
http://copyninja.info
Connect on ~friendica: copyninja at samsargika.copyninja.info
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