Re: [microblaze-uclinux] Mainline Linux status

Subject: Re: [microblaze-uclinux] Mainline Linux status

From: John Williams <jwilliams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:22:09 +1000

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On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Chris Robson <Chris.Robson@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The mailing list has some discussion about mainline Linux development. I was wondering what the status of any mainline Linux distro might be? Is there anything that is up and running on a Xilinx core? How much of what is running is a real mainline Linux? Mainline Linux defined here as not a Uclinux derivative but containing (or will contain) feature sets of a typical distro such as Fedora or the like (but not inclusive to every feature set or any one particular distro flavour).

First to distinguish the kernel from the distro (libs, apps, runtime config etc):

We are currently working with Xilinx to get the MicroBlaze arch integrated into the kernel.org upstream sources. Target for this is the 2.6.31 / 32 timeframe.

Regarding the distro, we use and support the PetaLinux distribution, a derivative from (and extension to) of the so-called uClinux-dist or SnapGear distribution, because it is a good fit with the type of embedded devices running the MicroBlaze kernel.

There are other embedded-oriented distributions, such as OpenEmbedded, PTXdist, Denx, and many others, and of course you can roll your own. None of these distributions have MicroBlaze support as far as I know, but there is nothing to stop you adding it.

You mention Fedora, while in principle you could probably repackage a Fedora distro from sources to target microblaze, I cannot imagine why you would want to do such a thing, Fedora is a desktop distribution, it would be overkill for a small embedded CPU like microblaze.

I hope this clarifies things a bit for you.

Regards,

John