armel support in ppa

[Vincenzo Ampolo]

Now that ubuntu supports armel and there are a lot of arm based devices around, it could be useful if ppa supports armel too.

Thanks

[Celso Providelo (cprov)]

This is actually more related with launchpad-buildd and the ubuntu toolchain working on a virtualized environment than soyuz. For us, all it takes is to toggle a check box via the UI.

[Philippe Coval (rzr)]

Seems some ppa already support armel , how to enable this feature then ?
--
http://rzr.online.fr/q/arm

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

PPAs have a "non-virtual" flag which means they build packages without a virtualization environment, as for Ubuntu builds. I think, but am not sure, that these PPAs also pull from the distro buildd pool. This setup is very fragile (a PPA package could do nasty things) and distro buildds are scarce, so access to PPAs with this flag is severly controlled.

We need a proper virtualization solution before we can offer PPA access for armel to all Launchpad users at large.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

So, long story short, there are no code changes to do here: we call into an API for virtualised builders, but there are none for PPA's yet. As soon as virtualised ARM builders are possible, we will be keen to get some. I'm closing this bug because there is no development to do.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Some folks are actively working on a solution for "safe" ARM builders for PPAs. It involves rebooting the hardware after each build with a fixed image that can't be compromised.

[Ricardo Salveti (rsalveti)]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Julian Edwards
<email address hidden> wrote:
> Some folks are actively working on a solution for "safe" ARM builders
> for PPAs.  It involves rebooting the hardware after each build with a
> fixed image that can't be compromised.

Just for reference:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/other-arm-n-public-panda-ppa-build-cluster

[Marius B. Kotsbak (mariusko)]

I don't understand this. Why can't these packages be cross compiled on x86 hardware?

[Michael Bienia (geser)]

For most packages it is unknown if the work when cross-compiled (build correctly and work afterwards) and it must be supported by upstream (using the right binaries during compilation). An alternative would by emulation but I don't know how fast and reliable it is (you don't want to start fixing build failures which only happen in the emulation or broken packages which compile in the emulation but don't work for some reason on the real hardware).

[IRIE Shinsuke (irie)]

In Linux 3.9, KVM will support ARM processors (Cortex A15). Is there any plan to support ARM in 3.9 or later?

[William Grant (wgrant)]

PPAs can build on emulated ARM builders now: https://dev.launchpad.net/CommunityARMBuilds

[IRIE Shinsuke (irie)]

Ah, I was not aware of that... Thanks for letting me know.

However, probably I cannot use it for the limitations (4hrs, 10builds/week)... so I'd like to use native builders, not emulated ones.