Linaro 13.04 Release With Linux Kernel 3.9 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.04 has just been released. It features Linux Kernel 3.9-rc7 and Android 4.2.2.

A lot of work has been done on ARMv8 (Cortex A53) with further work on OpenEmbedded, more testing, and updates to the GCC toolchain. Calxeda EnergyCore server has been added to LAVA, Origen Quad now gets hardware video acceleration in Android Jelly Bean. Still more cleanup has been done on the kernel side with regards to Samsung and ST SoC, and a big.LITTLE porting guide is now available (linaro login required).

Here are the highlights of this release:

LAVA
- Prototype of a new publishing system is used to overcome performance problems with android-build.linaro.org.
- Calxeda EnergyCore support is merged in LAVA, and an isolated system has been set up for web benchmarking.
- Fedora support is merged in LAVA. A user can submit LAVA jobs using a Fedora pre-built image.
- Boot commands are untangled from LAVA dispatcher. They’re now read from images.
- Nexus implementation in LAVA is generalized and reusable for other devices that support fastboot/adb.
- Linaro Image Tools 2013.04 released
- More xml-rpc APIs available in lava dashboard to make life easy.
- Test Definitions now available in lava dashboard. Accumulation of meta-data via test definitions started.
Builds and Baselines
- Dalvik VM unit test has been automated.
- Accelerated video playback support on Android was added for Origen Quad.
- Skia and 0xbench tests were added into lava-test-shell.
- Test suite builder has been set up to provide test suite binaries as an overlay for Android.
- Toolchain integration
  - Native toolchain on Android updated to 4.8.
  - Binaries for GCC 4.7 and 4.8 based toolchains released.
  - Android tree updated to compile with 4.8 based toolchains, all related changes upstreamed.
- ARMv7 KVM enabled kernels and images are daily built and tested in Linaro’s CI loop.
- OpenEmbedded ARMv8 engineering build provides 64bit HipHop VM requirements for porting and optimization purposes.
- OpenEmbedded test cases (https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/QA/TestCases/OpenEmbedded) have been automated. See https://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=qa/test-definitions.git;a=tree;f=openembedded for current list.
- Linux Linaro 3.9 2013.04 released
  - 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
  - patch from ARM LT to fix lockups/crashes seen when enabling function tracer on TC2 with the not yet mainlined cpuidle driver
- New or updated packages available from Linaro’s Overlay PPA: edk2-uefi, gator-daemon, gator, openssl and powerdebug.
Graphics
- dma-buf – (upstream) debugfs support released, accepted for 3.10
- AV playback bringup on Jelly Bean on Origen Quad complete and released to android team
- kernel – (upstream) patches to adds common FIMD device node for all Exynos4 SoCs.
- piglit – gles2-all and android support released via git. opencl-arm established with fixes specifically for ARM
- audio – Channel swap for panda has been fixed in 3.9 and 3.8 as well.
- opencl – Proof of Concept SNU CPU only OpenCL lib investigated and ported to armhf, available via git
Kernel
- Refactor EHCI controller code
- Depopulate the Exynos <mach-exynos/include-mach> directory
- Expanded Binder Unit Test – Implement base ioctl unit tests
- Depopulate the ux500 and plat-nomadik <mach/*> and <plat/*>
- Improve eMMC Power Management Support – Merge patches to add a skeleton for doing background operations at idle time, based on runtime PM
- Port some of the simpler platforms to multi-platform support
  - integrator: get to a state where DT is working fully as a prerequisite
  - pci: fix PCI device tree problems when resolving IRQs
  - SPEAr
  - Finalize Nomadik DT transition by moving the clocks to DT
  - Convert u300 to DT as a prerequisite
- Android upstreaming: ashmem
- Android alarm-dev compat_ioctl support
- Implement and upstream ARM 32 bit uprobes (userspace probes) support
Power Management
- Porting guide for big.LITTLE switcher is available (https://wiki.linaro.org/Internal/Projects/Big.Little.Switcher/Docs/porting-guide).
- cpuidle : consolidate ARM drivers
- DVFS for the Common Clock Framework
- thermal: Powertop Integration – Add basic RFC patch and send for review
- Linaro PM QA 0.4.1 2013.04 released. Fixed in this release:
- Linaro Powerdebug 0.6.3 2013-04 released. Fixed in this release:
QA
- Tests to cover big.LITTLE cluster init and shutdown have been added to the big.LITTLE core test suite
- big.LITTLE extended test case scenarios have been implemented.
- Functional and regression tests for scheduler from ARM have been integrated, covering HMP patches.
Toolchain
- Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.04 released, based off the latest GCC 4.8.0+svn197294 release.
  - Initial optimized support for Cortex-A53 for arm*-*-* targets.
  - Improved support for new ARMv8-A instructions for arm*-*-* and aarch64*-*-* targets.
  - Backport of optimizations concerning whether to use Neon for 64-bit bitops for arm*-*-* targets.
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.04 released, based off the latest GCC 4.7.2+svn197188 release.
  - Includes arm/aarch64-4.7-branch up to svn revision 196381.
  - Backport vectorizer cost model.
  - Turn off 64-bit Bitops in Neon.
- Linaro GCC 4.6 2013.04 released, based off the latest GCC 4.6.3+svn197511 release. It’s the last monthly release of 4.6 series.
- Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2013.04 released, updated to Linaro GCC 4.7 2013.04 and Linaro GCC 4.8 2013.04
LEG
- Linaro UEFI 2013.04 released – bugfix
- OpenSSL optimisations
- SCT (Self-Certification Test)is now running without any crashes.
- ACPI topic branch is being prepared for inclusion into linux-linaro tree.

Visit https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1304/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.