[fedora-arm] arm port status

[Lennert Buytenhek]

I didn't get any feedback from the relevant maintainers, so I
decided to just go ahead and submit the ARM gcc and glibc package
diffs to BZ:
	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=246800
	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=246801

I've included a backport of the upstream fix for gcc PR30486, which
fixes the ARM EABI fortran bootstrap, so we now have gcc-gfortran
packages as well.  It's not very likely that people would want to
use ARM systems for their nuclear weapons simulations, but at least
it brings the selection of available packages closer to what's in
x86 Fedora, which is a Good Thing.

Also, since our ARM changes are in rpm 4.4.2.1-rc1, I've BZ'd that
as well:
	https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=246803

I'm not entirely sure what it takes to get someone to look at our
BZs.  We might have to start bribing package maintainers (say, with
large quantities of various alcoholic beverages) at some point.


Looking beyond getting the ARM diffs into Fedora, I'm very
interested in things like footprint optimisation, cross compiling,
and such.

I posted initial diffs for a cross-gcc package from Fedora sources
to fedora-devel-list@ recently.  A set of i386 RPMS for an arm
cross-toolchain is available here:
	http://www.wantstofly.org/~buytenh/cross/

It's still somewhat experimental (for example, I'm not entirely
satisfied yet about the sysroot handling), but it works well enough
to cross-compile an ARM kernel, and it manages to cross-compile a
native ARM gcc (i.e. build=i386 host=arm target=arm cross build) as
well.  Eventually, we'd like to be able to cross-build entire RPMS.

Also, I've started collecting patches to break e.g. the python-
dependent parts of packages off into separate subpackages, and
patches to allow rebuilding packages with less dependencies (e.g.
to not pull in libselinux), etc.  Packaging things like eglibc
and dropbear is also on the list.

Since a lot of these patches aren't likely to go into Fedora
soon, I'm looking into a way of making maintaining sets of diffs
against Fedora sources easier.  In essence, to have local branches
of the distro, e.g. a "cross branch" with diffs to make various
packages cross-compile-able, a "footprint branch" with diffs to
reduce package footprint/dependencies, and such.  (Judging by the
uptake of the ARM diffs so far, we'll probably need an "ARM branch"
as well.)


I've played around a bit with creating minimal root filesystems
(in the 4-8 MiB range, for use as the flash image in your wireless
access point / VoIP gateway / ADSL router.)  Manually creating a 8
MiB minimal ARM filesystem based on the ARM RPMS that we carry
actually isn't all that hard.  Doing it in an automated and
repeatable way is somewhat harder.  Most of the work to be done in
this area is in the tools, and should probably tie in closely with
revisor, pilgrim, and such.