Linaro 11.09 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.4

Linaro has just released version 11.09 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.4.

Here are the highlights of the release:

Android
- Ethernet Configuration Manager from the x86 Android project is now available in all builds.
- Ethernet now works on Panda, Staging Panda, Beagle, Beagle xM, Staging Snowball.
- QA on all boards for the 11.09 Linaro Android Builds.
- Daily builds of Android toolchain against gcc-linaro bzr repository is provided.
- Android is now compiled with GCC4.6 with -O3.
- Busybox is built from source in all Android builds.
- glmark2 added to all the official builds for Android.
- Powertop is now available on Android.
- Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked.
- All Android builds are running with the 11.09 toolchain.
- The MLO that Panda and Staging Panda uses for Android uses gets built from source from the upstream git.
- An OMAP4460 Android build is available from android-build.
- Panda supports Bluetooth.
- Panda supports Wi-Fi.
- Snowball Android A-release from igloocommunity.org can be built and programmed with Linaro tools. Some gits containing binaries must be downloaded and be part of a local build due to license requirements.
- Automated verification and merge of changes reviewed in gerrit.
- Panda can now go into and come out of suspend.
Developer Platform
- Daily builds for both U-Boot Linaro and Upstream now published at the Staging Overlay, with hardware packs generated including the daily builds. This is the first and most important step to reach a proper CI loop.
- Native Gcc-Linaro packages are now available at the Overlay PPA.
- Cross Gcc-Linaro packages that support multi-architectures are now available at the Toolchain Backports PPA.
- Ubuntu hardware packs are now ported to use version 2, reducing the dependency on linaro-image-tools.
- Added LTTng 2.0 prerelease support to feature a unified trace-control client “lttng” to control both kernel tracing and userspace tracing.
- Support for Multiarch on Debian/Ubuntu has yielded 28 package changes upstream and at Oneiric Overlay PPA.
- Ubuntu Oneiric now also provides the libjpeg-turbo package, based on the Linaro 11.09 release.
- The Systemtap diagnostic tool has been integrated into the Ubuntu LEBs images. Systemtap will report on kernel function entry/exit with function parameters and return relevant values.
- Local modifications at U-Boot-Linaro are all sent upstream, and code is rebased against U-Boot v2011.09rc2.
- Ubuntu Oneiric release will deliver support for release 11.09 of linux-linaro kernel packages.
- Live-build now supports using linaro-media-create as part of image creation to now directly output to SD card or dd-able image file.
- Daily packages for Linaro Powerdebug, glcompbench and GLMark2 are now available at the Staging Overlay, supporting the continuous integration effort by enabling the automatically generated packages to be available for the Ubuntu LEB.
Graphics
- UMM: a set of topic branches has been made available – http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=people/jessebarker/linaro-mm-sig/linux-2.6.git;a=summary. The set contains the current patches for UMM work – with contributions of CMA patchset, the DRM/KMS driver for OMAP4 (from Multimedia WG), and dma_buf code first implementation for the buffer object sharing.
- glmark2 has been updated with quite a few new items: command-line option to specify the benchmarks to run using a text file, new benchmark for blur desktop effect, support for multiple lights in the phong shading benchmark, support for loading models from OBJ geometry files, per-scene options to set shader precision at runtime.
- GLEW lib v1.6.0 which supports OpenGL and OpenGL ES has been released. The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) is a cross-platform open-source C/C++ extension loading library. GLEW provides efficient run-time mechanisms for determining which OpenGL extensions are supported on the target platform.
- Unity/Compiz/Nux for Oneiric build on ARM has also been updated to latest Oneiric code, other than fixing some crashes and bugs
Kernel
- Submitted over 100 patches upstream to cleanup and consolidate various kernel headers that will allow for building of a single kernel across multiple SOCs.
- Continued to implement Device Tree support for Linaro member platforms, focusing on changes to drivers and subsystems inlcuding IRQ controllers, GPIO, serial devices, MMC devices, and regulators across various SOCs. This work also included porting for the new i.mx6 SOC and the ARM Versatile Express platform.
- Submitted several revisions of the pinctrl/pinmux subsystem for review and made significant progress in getting it accepted by the community.
- Continued work on adding Thumb-2 support to the kernel including fixing randconfig build errors, reviewing sub-arch ports for non-Thumb-2 compatible code, and working on documentation to help SOCs ports migrate to Thumb-2.
Multimedia
- Alsa UCM first release in Ubuntu LEB. The ALSA Use Case Manager (UCM) is a LGPL library designed to allow high level control of audio use cases in sound device hardware. It is intended to be used by applications to quickly and easily change the hardware audio use case of a device in a generic and portable manner.
- libjpeg-turbo reworked to become faster in starting up and it also gets rid of race conditions. Also it has been work to use runtime detection of NEON enabled hardware. Also the library was pushed to Oneiric.
- OpenMAX vendor survey created and presented to OpenMAX IL WG – https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Middleware/Multimedia/Specs/1111/OpenMaxIntegration?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=OpenMax_Survey.pdf. The survey lists and analyzes SoC vendors client implementations of OpenMax IL.
OCTO
- Cobbler network boot setup tested and documented – https://wiki.linaro.org/OfficeofCTO/NetworkBoot
Power Management
- Sched_mc support for ARM has been accepted in mainline, it will be in the 3.2 kernel
- The common Save/Restore for cpuidle code is working on Samsung Exynos platform.
- Powertop is now available on Android.
Toolchain
- Added new performance improvements to gcc-linaro, including improving conditional compares, constant generation in Thumb-2, reducing over promotion when vectorising, and adding support for vectorising widening multiplies.
- Added remote hardware watchpoint support to gdb-linaro.
Validation
- Continuous Integration systems scheduling their jobs in LAVA can now easily link to the results and query the results by using the id returned by the scheduler.
- LAVA results can now be tagged for grouping with other results.
- LAVA now includes a test execution framework for running tests and benchmarks on Android platform.
- Jobs can be cancelled from the scheduler User Interface or Command Line Interface.
- LAVA can now be put into a state to finish the jobs already in progress, but not start new ones so that a maintenance window can be created.
- Information like SHA1 and UUID in results views have been replaced by a more human readable fields. See also Planet Linaro post.
- The LAVA dispatcher is now available as a package.
- Local configuration data for LAVA dispatcher is now stored in configuration files. See also Planet Linaro post.
- The LAVA scheduler can be shutdown or restarted without affecting the jobs that are running.
- A new view has been added to the scheduler to show details about each device.
- LAVA Test has been reconstructed as a plugin under LAVA Tool.
- A new kernel package can be specified for testing directly in the LAVA dispatcher.

Here are the known issues for this release:

Ubuntu image – icons and parts of screen disappear with Origen
imx51 randomly truncates serial input at 31 characters
Ethernet is not enabled by default
Snowball USB not working on Android/Ubuntu
No HDMI display working in linux-linaro-android 3.0-2011.07 forPandaBoard
[mx51evk] root not found and boot failed to initramfs shell
Android LEB fails to mount system and user partition intermittently
Make available source and debug packages corresponding to Linaro binary images
Combined V2/V3 Snowball hwpack (20110905) fails with l-m-c in Ubuntu
perf failure on panda (omap4)
GLK3.0 allows processes to overwrite page frame data on Ubuntu for Snowball board
SNOWBALL: ECM needs to be brought up for Ethernet to work on Android
Ethernet does not work automatically after plugging in Ethernet on Android
boot script is now mandatory with hwpack v2
Suspend resume feature: display never dims on Android for PandaBoard
gcc-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabi is uninstallable on Oneiric Ubuntu

Go to https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1109/Release for further release details about the LBE, Android, Kernel, Graphics, Landing Team, Platform, Power management and Toolchain (GCC / Qemu) components.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.