Linaro 13.01 Release with Linux Kernel 3.8 and Android 4.2.1

Linaro has just announced release 13.01 which includes Linux Kernel 3.8-rc4 and Android 4.2.1.

A lot of work seems to have gone in Arndale board and OpenEmbedded ARMv8. It’s the first time an Ubuntu image is released for Arndale Cortex A15 development board. One the kernel side some Android upstreaming work has been done, as well as some fixes for eMMC, and code for ST Ericsson Novathor 8500 SoC has been reorganized. Version 14 of the big.LITTLE MP (Multi Processing) has been released. The LEG has done further work on Linaro UEFI and GRUB.

Here are the highlights of this release:

Android
- Platform Work
  - The first step of the android-build front-end update for new build program has been landed.
  - Origen and Versatile Express manifests have been consolidated into a single manifest.
  - linaro-android-tools were developed to improve development time for kernel developers. See Kernel Update Tools for details.
  - The android-build scripts have been cleaned up and should work from Ubuntu 10.04 and work for restricted builds as well.
  - busybox was upgraded to 1.21
- Enablement
  - Audio Playback for panda is fixed.
  - External sdcard issue on pandaboard and origen quad was fixed.
- LAVA/Testing
  - Third party benchmark suite is updated to use the uiautomator testing framework.
Developer Platform
- CI bring up: Arndale
  - Add binary pre-bootloader package for Arndale (BL1)
  - Include Arndale support into Linaro U-Boot
  - Update u-boot-linaro source package to build a binary package for Arndale
  - Update edk2-uefi source package to build a binary package for Arndale
  - Pulls Arndale support into Linux Linaro
  - Add linaro-image-tools support for Arndale
  - Add package-and-publish linux linaro CI job for Arndale
  - Add hwpack configurations for Arndale
  - Setup CI job for Arndale hwpack daily builds
  - Create a pre-built image for Arndale
- Enable 64-bit HipHop VM development in OpenEmbedded
  - Build dwarfutils, libmcrypt, libmemcached, memcached, onig, google-glog and libevent 1.4.14b with Facebook patch
  - Mark libdwarf and libunwind and google-perftools as optional (JIT requirement)
  - Create meta-toolchain-hhvm
- Porting userspace applications for ARMv8: fuse ,libaio, xserver-xorg, cmake, nspr …
- Merge ARMv8 support into OpenEmbedded
  - Merged slang, libffi, libart-lgpl, ghostscript, cmake, linux-libc-headers, libav, oprofile, python-numpy, xserver-xorg, gmp, attr, libaio, fuse and nspr changes into OE (and upstream if applicable)
- Create Toolchain validation setup
  - Add options to jenkins-setup scripts to pass architecture and GCC version
  - Add ARMv7a gcc-4.7 and gcc-4.6 LAMP builds to ci.linaro.org
  - Update CI jobs publishing to snapshots.linaro.org
  - Merge changes in toolchain-layer
- Linux Linaro 3.8-rc4 2013.01 released
  - Based off linux-linaro-core-tracking tree, llct-20130123.0 tag
    - Based off v3.8-rc4
    - Updated linaro-android-3.8 topic by John Stultz
    - Gator version 5.13
    - big.LITTLE MP version master-v14
    - eMMC patches from Kernel WG
  - Updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT
  - Updated patches from Samsung LT: Arndale support added
  - Ethernet fixes for Snowball: ethernet works OK now
  - A patch to enable perf in Android by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
  - Ashmem patch by Serban Constantinescu
  - VExpress64 support (both RTSM and Foundation models)
- Linaro U-Boot 2013.01.1 released
  - LP #1103004 [Arndale] u-boot-linaro lacks pxeboot support
- OpenEmbedded ARMv8 build has been updated
  - Toolchain updated to Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.01
  - Kernel updated to Linux Linaro 3.8-rc4
  - Various bug fixes
Graphics
- Piglit (OpenGL driver testing framework) is now able to run 1047 tests on ARM linux.
Infrastructure
- Android Engineering builds
- cbuild can now use LAVA for the native ARM builders
- linaro-image-tools adds support for board configuration files for Android: read details on http://www.milo.name/2013/01/29/linaro-image-tools-android-hwpack/ and https://wiki.linaro.org/AndroidHardwarePacksV3
Kernel
- Android upstreaming
  - Mempressure cgroup got an lwn article: https://lwn.net/Articles/531077
  - keyreset work got an initial patch queued with the input driver for 3.9
  - alarm-dev compat_ioctl support for 32-app on 64bit-kernel is queued for 3.9
  - First pass implementation of extended ashmem unit test completed
  - ashmem compat_ioctl support reworked to include feedback from lkml
- ux500
  - conversion to common clock got several patchsets merged upstream by Torvalds
  - now uses sparse IRQs and accepted in ARM SoC
- EHCI refactoring separated mxc, spear, orion and tegra host controller driver from ehci-hcd into its own driver modules
- Research impact on kernel size for multi-platform configs
  - Gather kernel image and runtime size data for i.MX platform with multiplatform config support
- AB8500 GPIO shape-up
- Android upstreaming: Ashmem
  - Review Minchan’s v5 vma based approach
- Android keyreset driver upstreaming
- Android upstreaming: Lowmem
  - Anton sent out non RFC version of mempressure cgroup patchset, got ack from Kirill A. Shutemov
  - Anton’s work was written up in an lwn article https://lwn.net/Articles/531077/
- Depopulate the ux500 and plat-nomadik <mach/*> and <plat/*>
- Refactor USB Host Drivers
  - Write Orine host controller driver to separate from ehci-hcd host code into its own driver module
- Android alarm-dev compat_ioctl support
- Refactor EHCI controller code
  - Separate the mxc,spear,orion and tegra host controller driver from ehci-hcd into its own driver modules
- Improve eMMC Power Management Support
  - Prepare patches for fixup I/O voltage switch in protocol layer
  - Prepare patches for adapt sdhci host driver to new sequence for how I/O voltage switch is done
- Support for EMMC 4.5 and UFS
  - Submit /integrate patches for fixing Power Off Notify issues
Power Management
- Integration tree to bring together big.LITTLE MP related work (V14 branch)
- DVFS for the Common Clock Framework
  - improve re-parenting in clk_set_rate
  - create new clk-next branch based on 3.8-rcN
  - brainstorm alternative locking mechanism
- Thermal framework enhancements for non-ACPI platforms
  - Get feedback from thermal tests PM-QA for all platforms and enable by default in LAVA
- sched: modify timer and workqueue framework to allow migration
  - Get patches reviewed and accepted in mainline
  - Analyse users of workqueue subsystem to check which drivers would break by migrating work to other cpus, total of 1200 drivers found
  - Implement queue_work_on_any_cpu() type interfaces
- Upstream stericsson u8500 suspend driver
  - Get clear the kernel requirements/constrains about suspend codes
  - Check the issue of rtc alarm doesn’t work
- cpuidle: testsuite in PM-QA
  - Understand the existing tests
- Upstream stericsson ab8500 thermal driver using new thermal framework
  - Keep reviewing and tracking patches for new thermal framework
  - Send out patches for upstreaming
- Linaro PM QA 0.4.0 released
Toolchain
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.01 released, based off GCC 4.7.2+svn194772
  - Includes arm/aarch64-4.7-branch up to svn revision 194808
  - Support for the rev16 and revsh instructions
  - A15 Neon pipeline backported from trunk
  - FMA intrinsic backported from trunk
  - Better extending core to NEON transfers
  - Fused multiply-add support
- Linaro GCC 4.6 2013.01 released, based off GCC 4.6.3+svn194771
- AArch64 Boehm GC port upstreamed
- Multimedia filters in WebP submitted for upstream approval.
- Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.01 released, updated to latest Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.01
LAVA
- Filters now support a “compare” feature that allows comparing the results of two different jobs.
- Filters results can now be downloaded as JSON data so people can generate their own custom reports.
- Galaxy Nexus support added
- pre-built CI images converted to use lava-test-shell
LEG
- Linaro UEFI 2013.01 released. Highlights include fixes for native building of UEFI on ARM platforms and improvements to flashing images on Arndale boards.
  - imgburn.sh: add parameters and defaults
  - panda: Enable native building for Pandaboard
  - LP #1091447 UEFI: A9 crashes on boot with ATAGS
- Linaro GRUB 2013.01 released.
  - Merge in latest upstream changes, including nested function removal.
  - Add cache line size probing for clean/invalidate operations
  - Fix a bug in D-cache clean operation.
  - Made code, especially Linux loader, more generic.

Visit https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1301/Release for a list of 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.