Linaro 12.07 Release with Kernel 3.5 and Android 4.0.4

Linaro has released version 12.07 based on Linux Kernel 3.5-rc3 and Android 4.0.4.

Some work has been done on Jelly Bean (but the port is for next month), several benchmark tools have been added to LAVA as Linaro wants to provide standard benchmarks for Android, Linaro ALIP image now uses LXDE by default with a smaller image and improved performance, and Open Embedded images are now available (minimal and LAMP stack).

Here are the highlights of the release:

Android
- Jellybean baselines for Galaxy and Panda with Linaro extra’s available
- Android Benchmarking apps were deployed for pandaboard, snowball and origen in LAVA including: vellamo, quadrant, nbench, linpack, glbenchmark, geekbench, caffeinemark, antutu, andebench
- Improved native Benchmarks variance on Android to 1%, working on Java variance
- ICS “tests” builds now produced by default and test lists generated
- Open overlay tarballs working
- pm-qa’s cpuidle cpufreq cpuhotplug sched_mc suspend integrated into the Android builds
- Linaro Android Snowball 4.0.4 is now in par with Snowball 4.0.3
Developer Platform
- Linaro ALIP is now using LXDE as the default environment, with a reduced image for better performance at ARM targets, such as Vexpress and FastModels (big.LITTLE architectures and standalone Cortex A15).
- Kernel packages updated to reflect the latest development trees from Linux Linaro (lct/ll-3.5 and llt-3.4) and the Landing Teams
- CI jobs for the Ubuntu Kernel Packages are now cross compiled at Jenkings once succesfull it’s pushed directly to the Kernel PPA, reducing the kernel package respin time considerably.
- Linux Linaro updated on top of the latest upstream release (3.5), and also reflecting the latest changes and development available at Linaro, such as big.LITTLE MP.
- OpenEmbedded ready targets for minimal and LAMP stacks compatible with ARMv7 are now available, generated automatically by ci.linaro.org and with images available at snapshots.linaro.org. If you are interested in trying to build OE Linaro, here are the instructions.
- U-Boot-Linaro updated with fixes for Omap 4 (Pandaboard) and also with the latest PXE-related changes from upstream.
- Cross toolchain packages updated at both Ubuntu Quantal and Toolchain Backports PPA to reflect the latest version available.
Infrastructure
- Linaro image tools now supports multiple boards and multiple bootloaders on a single hardware pack.
- Build information can now be defined and exported for external use.
- Create a skeleton Django-based web application for the CI dashboard with basic web serving, API framework, persistence layer and OpenID-based authentication and ACLs.
- Click through license protection supports EULA versioning and branding and OpenID authentication.
Graphics
- glmark2
  - Add Android GUI for defining and running benchmarks.
  - Add benchmark based on the WebGL jellyfish demo (scene ‘jellyfish’).
  - Add benchmark based on the WebGL dynamic terrain demo (scene ‘terrain’).
  - Extend texture scene with the option to compute texture coordinates in the shader (option ‘texgen’).
  - Add support for reading texture data from JPEG files.
  - Properly support options that have a finite set of acceptable values.
- glcompbench
  - New ‘scale’ test to simulate window manager scaling effect.
  - Enhancements to test options for existing tests.
Kernel – No info available yet
Multimedia – No info available yet
Power Management
- b.L MP tree integrated into linux-linaro but not enabled for TC2 due to unrelated last-minute problems for ARM LT
- Bug fixes to PM-QA tests to not run if feature is not found
Toolchain
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.07 is the fourth release in the 4.7 series. Based off the latest GCC 4.7.0+svn189098 release, it includes performance improvements around choice of auto-increment based addressing modes for floating point values.
- Updates to GCC 4.7.0+svn189098
- Implements improvements to ivopts selection of addressing modes of floating point values.
Validation
- Added support for Android FastModels in LAVA
- Created a new QA test view for daily testing

Go to https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1207/Release for known issues and further release details about the LEB, 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.