RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Forum thread started by l8night on Fri, 2011-12-30 17:29

Is anyone interested in porting Haiku to go onto a raspberry pi board http://www.raspberrypi.org/
I can see that there has been a bit of talk about it and I believe parts work with Qemu (not sure which core)
as I see it the best thing to do first is get an initial port to 1136 versatile board as the raspberry pi is an 1176ZF (thats like the 1136 with trustzone and a VFPU)
I'm trying to gather up an the info and working scripts (please don't just post "it would be great" please post some useful links [like how to get Qemu booting a simple arm compiled image etc) so if you have tried or have some good info on getting Qemu/Arm images build or had success with getting the Haiku kernal crosscompiled PLEASE HELP ME ;)
as an incentive I'm willing to buy a few (5) raspberry pi boards when the become available to donate to the cause

Comments

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

jpelczar is working on a port that would probably cross compile to ARM.

http://haiku-os.org/community/forum/haiku_port_avr32

Just because Pi is cheap does not mean that porting Haiku to ARM is easy...

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

AndrewZ wrote:

jpelczar is working on a port that would probably cross compile to ARM.

I saw, I have contacted him directly as I hope that his work will save me (and others) time.

AndrewZ wrote:

Just because Pi is cheap does not mean that porting Haiku to ARM is easy...

I agree, but as it's cheap other are more likely to buy one to run Haiku than they are if I port to Panda board which is about 8 times the price (8 times faster too)
and RaspberryPi, Beagle Board and Panda board all have the same issue with propitiatory GPU's (unless you are a closed source vendor with deep pockets),
and ARM port will not be easy bu once there is an 1136 kernel, that will run on 1176 and A8 (or Sheeva (AinR) ) then its only a case of porting the GPU and io devices specific to each board.
if it was easy I would have done it by now I own a few arm boards and have gcc cross compiler and native compilers (I've developed apps on my panda board and may well use that or my Sheeva plug to build a kernel)

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Datasheet posted today:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/615

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Actually Allwinner A10 or Xynos based tablets are probably the best thing to port to at the moment they are cheap and are real devices unlike a Pandaboard or Rasberrypi the former I have used myself and it was full of bugs in the design... the whole device is FSF compatible as there is a GPU driver being released And it will eventually be reworked into a Mesa/gallium driver.

http://limadriver.org/

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Count me in as another keen on seeing a ARM port of Haiku! I understand the need to get the x86 version stable first but Haiku and ARM seem like they were made for one another to me.

I ordered a Pandaboard myself in December that still hasn't arrived yet so I'm obviously keen on seeing some focus on that platform but at the same time I must agree with cb88 in that boards featuring the Mali GPU would be the most logical ARM platform to port to first being the most FOSS friendly.

I personally have no need for a tablet - I would buy a snowball or origen SBC or a netbook/laptop with a similar chipset in pref. to the Pandaboard but they're both twice the price of the Pandaboard (and 10x the price of the Pi!) currently.

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Just be aware that you can't use large SD cards on the Pandaboard unless you use a USB adapter.

If you intend to do any heavy IO for instance compiling get a USB hard drive (not a flash drive) or do it over NFS.

I ram gentoo on a flash drive compiling on the device... thats just asking for trouble really.

Calling ARM itself today a platform really isn't accurate.. as each separate device is a separate platform little to no standardization :/ which is why there isn't an sucessful ARM port yet.

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

cb88:

Which version of which model Panda do you have?

I should have mine within the next week. I've been on the mailing list for months already so I've read of the various probs I am to expect but I can also clearly see a significant number of people have bought the Panda who admit they are total Linux noobs and not ex-Commodore and ex-Zaurus, Linux user since '96 types like me! ;)

Having read up on this subject more, I am now of the opinion that these Mali GPU devices like Snowball and Origen are no better free-software wise than the Panda as the open source Lima Mali driver is having to be reverse engineered as its official drivers are every bit as closed as the official drivers for the Panda's SGX GPU.

There have been rumours of an upcoming, official open source SGX driver and should that never occur then an open source SGX driver could likely utilise code from OpenFIMG:

https://github.com/tom3q/openfimg/wiki

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

I would be very interested in seeing a port and I would love to help - I just have too many projects and no free time to do so :/

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Just a heads up. Alexander von Gluck has recently made a couple of commits including "Add board definition for Raspberry Pi" but he adds "don't get too excited, or expect any Haiku love for it anytime soon." So I guess anybody with the skills, the time and an example of the hardware to work on this could get in touch with Alexander.

Alan

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

It was either an A1 or A2 not 100% sure and don't have access to it anymore as it was for my senior design project.

I do have an N800 which has a released MBX driver but the display output for it is broken and its a binary driver on top of that so they are like "good luck with that" heh. I still use the n800 quite alot Opera Mobile is awesome.

In anycase ... software for are should *definitely* enable hardfp support...so thats is something to keep in mind.

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

I got my A4 a few days ago so I've not got to play with it much and so far I've only run stuff from a 32GB class 10 SD card but considering it is running off an SD I've been impressed so far- I've seem to have all the hardware working (not tested bluetooth or mic input yet) under ICS and 11.10. It really light years apart from how things were on my Zaurus C3000 a few years ago! Now I just need a power efficient USB HD or SSD and a SGX (PVR-omap4) driver for 12.04 armhf (coming soon I'm told) before I can see what this hardware can really do!

Re: RaspberryPi's to port Haiku to ....

Mic and Analog audio out on our pandaboard were a bit of a pain when I was using it in the fall... all the bits to make it work were there though.. you just had to poke them just right :)

I think we had issues with overheating on long compiles as well I think it was a kernel issue we weren't aware of at the time that I found out about after the fact... so at least monitor the temps or put a heatsink on it.