Linaro 13.03 Release with Linux Kernel 3.9 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.03 is now available, and features Linux Kernel 3.9-rc3 and Android 4.2.2.

This month, Linaro has released their first Origen Quad Android image, as well as Tiny Android build for Arndale. The ALIP image listed in the download page is still based on Ubuntu 12.11, but as doc Bormental noticed earlier this month, the latest ALIP Quantal 13.03 image is available for download at https://releases.linaro.org/latest/ubuntu/quantal-images/alip. Some development tools (gcc, g++, vi, make..) are now included in Android, so you can develop and build natively from your Android device. Linaro has kept on cleaning the Linux kernel ARM tree for Exynos and ST Ericson SoCs. More work has been done on big.LITTLE for both IKS and HMP, as well as ARMv8 OpenEmbedded, and an initial GRUB port on ARM UEFI is now available.

Here are the highlights of this release:

Automation and Validation
- A simple CLI tool for communicating with the CI dashboard has been developed
- LAVA supports Arndale booting with UEFI. The bootloader configuration is done on the fly
- Snowballs coming back online
Builds and Baselines
- linux-linaro-arndale Bringup with Tiny Android build for Arndale setup, and Android with GUI planned for the next cycle.
- Origen-Quad Member build
- Native Toolchain on Android
  - The toolchain is now available natively inside Linaro Android builds.
  - The builds now include gcc, g++, vim, make, a terminal emulator and a vi-friendly keyboard.
- Unified manifest – Details on how to work with common manifest can be found on https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/WorkWithCommonManifest
- Restructure release toolchain – Released toolchains are checked into a prebuilts/ git repository and pulled in by the manifest as opposed to being downloaded as separate tarballs.This is the approach taken by AOSP to distribute the toolchain.
- CTS Support in LAVA
  - CTS support for 4.2 reworked for better stability.
  - CTS has been enabled for the Engineering builds.
  - Investigations to be done next cycle on tests that are not getting executed.
- Linux Linaro 3.9 2013.03 released
  - based off linux-linaro-core-tracking tree, llct-20130321.0 tag:
  - updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT
  - updated arndale/exynos patches from Samsung LT
  - a patch to enable perf in Android by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
  - vexpress64 support (both RTSM and Foundation model)
  - panda-fix-usb topic to make USB and on-board ethernet to work on Panda with Device Tree enabled (cherry-pick / forward port of some of the dev.omapzoom.org commits)
  - a few fixes for MMC on Snowball from STE Landing Team
- Enable 64bit HipHop VM development in OpenEmbedded
- Improve Ubuntu engineering build CI loop
- ARMv7 KVM CI Bringup
- Merge ARMv8 support into OpenEmbedded
- CI bring up: Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 (highbank)
  - Added hwpack configurations for ECX-1000 (highbank)
  - Set up CI job for ECX-1000 (highbank) hwpack daily builds
- Adapt core LAVA tests from Ubuntu/Android to OpenEmbedded engineering build
Graphics
- upstream: Version 10 of CMA-ION patches released by Benjamin Gaignard. ION is a new memory allocator for Android. CMA stands with Continuous Memory Allocator. Click here for details.
- upstream: Android piglit enablement patches for OpenGL ES 2 updated and released by Tom Gall
- upstream: Version 1 of variable-index-* shader-tests extended for Android and Linux released by Tom Gall
- upstream: Version 1 of debugfs support for dma-buf released by Sumit Semwal
- upstream: Version 9 of DRM FIMD DT support for Exynos4 DT machine released by Vikas Sajjan
Kernel
- Depopulate the Exynos <mach-exynos/include-mach> directory
- Convert UX500 to common clk
- Refactor EHCI controller code – Separated ehci_tegra host controller driver from ehci-hcd into its own driver
- Depopulate the ux500 and plat-nomadik <mach/*> and <plat/*>
- Android alarm-dev compat_ioctl support
- Android keyreset driver upstreaming
- Improve eMMC Power Management Support
- Android Sync infrastructure Upstreaming
Power Management
- Dynamic timer irq affinity: set up the timer irq affinity to the cpu concerned by the first timer expiration – This patch was upstreamed.
- cpufreq driver for IKS has been optimized
- Analysis of HMP scheduler optimizations using bbench and their applicability to A15 SMP systems is completed: No performance regressions were seen.
- sched: modified timer and workqueue framework to allow migration to non-idle cpus
- Powerdebug is ported to Android platform and available in builds
- Thermal manager: Powertop Integration.
Toolchain
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.03 released, based off the latest GCC 4.7.2+svn195745 release
- Linaro GCC 4.6 2013.03 released, based off the latest GCC 4.6.3+svn196247 release
- Linaro QEMU 2013.03 released, based off upstream (trunk) QEMU. This release has been updated to be based on upstream’s recent 1.4.0 release. It also includes ARM KVM support patches which are in sync with the ABI as committed to the upstream Linux kernel for 3.9. This feature is still under development but will no longer be subject to kernel-vs-userspace ABI breaks.
- Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.03 released, updated to Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.03
- Updated GCC’s ARM backend to use new vectorizer cost model infrastructure
LEG
- ACPI: we now can load RSDP, XSDT, FADT and DSDT tables
- Initial GRUB port on ARM UEFI is available. The tree can be found on https://code.launchpad.net/~leif-lindholm/linaro-grub/arm-uefi

Visit https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1303/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.