00:45 <PiLeS> More seriously but in the same vein, I reckon that releasing a ready-made minimal toolchain that would allow compilation FOR the Ben FROM the Ben would be a Good Thing (TM). I know of some people (including me) who would spend more time working on ports if it didn't take up >2 GB and -more importantly- precious CPU cycles from my^H^Htheir money-generating workstation.

00:45 <PiLeS> just sayin'

00:46 <wolfspraul> PiLeS: totally hear you

00:46 <wolfspraul> one reason we had to kick out gcc from the standard image once was that the 512mb rootfs was full

00:47 <wolfspraul> it's hovering around 480mb now, basically whenever we add something nice we have to think what else to remove

00:47 <wolfspraul> sure things are installable with opkg, but that requires work to setup and is generally more inconvenient than if things are preinstalled

00:47 <wolfspraul> thanks to work from David and Lars the nand and ubifs are so fast now that we could easily mount the entire 2gb

00:48 <wolfspraul> but how to switch from 512mb to 2gb without breaking compatibility for a lot of people, that's tough

00:48 <wolfspraul> once at the beginning we switched from 256mb to 512mb, and it took more than a year until finally people didn't run into bugs related to that switch anymore

00:54 <PiLeS> Maybe what is needed is some form of classification in the packages; a bit like what the Debian guys did, but better ;)

00:59 <PiLeS> Anyway, that wasn't my point.

01:01 <wolfspraul> PiLeS: huh? what was your point then?

01:02 <PiLeS> opkg is easy enough as it is

01:02 <wolfspraul> ok

01:02 <PiLeS> I was dreaming

01:02 <wolfspraul> which tools are you missing?

01:02 <wolfspraul> that's good

01:03 <wolfspraul> my dream Ben has gigaherz-anything and can do everything

01:03 <PiLeS> erm

01:03 <wolfspraul> :-)

01:05 <PiLeS> the tools that I'm missing right now (and that I'm too lazy/busy/important/stupid/pick-any to develop by myself is a full xburst toolchain image for the Ben

01:05 <PiLeS> Or maybe it is around and I missed it?

01:06 <wolfspraul> xburst-toolchain, what do you mean exactly?

01:06 <wolfspraul> we have gcc, we are probably weak on headers and libraries

01:12 <PiLeS> These are building blocks. They are fine. I was thinking more along the lines of that: http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Building_OpenWRT_on_Debian_6

01:12 <PiLeS> but for the Ben.

01:12 <PiLeS> That's some work

01:13 <PiLeS> but it will draw the geeks like honey does for flies.

01:13 <PiLeS> Free labour!

01:15 <wolfspraul> you mean you want to build the entire image on the Ben?

01:15 <wolfspraul> run openwrt on ben? :-)

01:15 <PiLeS> And by For the Ben I really mean FROM the Ben

01:15 <PiLeS> Yup

01:16 <PiLeS> Maybe not the full image, that's where classification kicks in

01:18 <wolfspraul> I think openwrt has some pretty cool online image generators now

01:18 <wolfspraul> unfortunately I forgot the url, lemme see whether I can find it somewhere

01:18 <wolfspraul> here http://openwrt.linux-appliance.net/ib/wizard.cgi?target=xburst

01:19 <wolfspraul> it's different from your idea but it also offloads building from your notebook/desktop

01:19 <wolfspraul> just not onto the Ben, but in the other direction (cloud :-))

01:23 <PiLeS> Nice.

01:27 <PiLeS> But that's still not what I meant.

01:28 <PiLeS> Anyway, just throwing ideas in the air, looking at how they fly ;-)

01:32 <PiLeS> The self-contained idea would appeal to geeks and devs with time to spare; no?

01:33 <PiLeS> I would most certainly devote my spare Ben to that! ;-)

01:33 <wolfspraul> don't know

01:33 <wolfspraul> we are talking about smart and imaginative people, they see something in the future

01:33 <wolfspraul> which excites them

01:33 <wolfspraul> but the excitements may differ a lot, because the future is so unclear and so full of possibilities :-)

01:34 <wolfspraul> so yes I can definitely *imagine* that some people get excited about this idea

01:34 <wolfspraul> not me though, at least not today. I have no problem with the idea of moving the building into the cloud, to powerful servers.

01:34 <wolfspraul> I rather have a great buildhost with gui, like the openwrt link I posted.

01:34 <PiLeS> well, I do

01:34 <wolfspraul> oh sure, please do

01:34 <wolfspraul> you asked me, so I answer :-)

01:34 <wolfspraul> for myself

01:34 <wolfspraul> think about the Milkymist One case

01:35 <wolfspraul> build the bitstream on the M1? the synthesis tools?

01:35 <wolfspraul> those are nice *ideas*, but not more than that. It will not happen for x years.

01:35 <PiLeS> Not the same thing

01:35 <wolfspraul> I can be motivated about something I can reach in 1 week, 1 month, maybe 3 months.

01:36 <PiLeS> Hey! You're a human being! ;-)

01:36 <wolfspraul> there are many things in-motion. embedded devices become more powerful, making them better targets for full distros, or be able to build all software on them

01:37 <wolfspraul> on the other side there are always yet more embedded devices appearing, with more integration, or specialized tools that need a powerful host computer, for now

01:37 <wolfspraul> so you need to think about the time horizon that motivates you

01:37 <wolfspraul> and I think you do :-)

01:37 <wolfspraul> otherwise you wouldn't be chatting with me here, you would be hacking on your idea

01:37 <wolfspraul> but your idea is impractical in the short run, so you kinda don't want to start :-)

01:37 <wolfspraul> if your goal is to make the Ben be able to build an entire Ben image on itself - GO FOR IT!

01:38 <wolfspraul> I am not stopping you

01:38 <wolfspraul> but you will be on this for a few months, maybe years?

01:38 <wolfspraul> so maybe you are not so excited about it, after all

01:38 <wolfspraul> we see :-)

01:39 <PiLeS> powerful host computer my shiny ass. This mighty old workstation was built by Michael Dell's tiny helper-hands 12 years ago.

01:39 <PiLeS> Also, Chatting while said workstation builds stuff...

01:40 <PiLeS> :-*

01:40 <wolfspraul> ok, but you want to run it on the Ben or not?

01:43 <PiLeS> I told you, I am a dreamer

02:48 <PiLeS> maybe I am not so excited. Maybe I am not worth. Maybe I should step down. Maybe Seppuku is in order.

02:49 <PiLeS> Maybe I should go to bed now, and be thankful for having a GF.

02:51 <PiLeS> Or maybe I should try and be more helpful, fuck girls, who needs them?

02:52 <PiLeS> Kuessen. Guten nacht.

05:22 <kyak> wpwrak: there is such script, but is it too hard to replace in mind? :)

08:35 <dvdk> wolfspraul: reading through the IRC logs;

08:35 <dvdk> wolfspraul: about the problem with limited space in 512 mb UBIFS partition:

08:35 <wpwrak> kyak: not too hard. but it's kinda cute if the machine does it for you ;-)

08:36 <dvdk> why don't we release multiple differently sized images, like one 512 mb "medium" image, and another 1GB "large" image with more packages included?

08:36 <dvdk> shouldn't be too difficult from the toolchain point of view. all these packages are built anyway, so throwing them into another, larger image shouldn't break anything

08:37 <dvdk> hmm, but size of the mtd partitions is fixed in the kernel? would need two corresponding versions for the kernel?

09:36 <wolfspraul> dvdk: yes, fixed partition sizes

09:48 <kyak> not this partition discussion again :)

09:52 <dvdk> wolfspraul: can't this be passed in from the boot loader? On PPC there is usually a device-tree file passed to the kernel that configures mtd partitioning

09:53 <dvdk> kyak: :)

10:31 <roh> dvdk: there is no device tree on mips afaik

10:32 <roh> blogic was working on something there.. for a different mips device. maybe we should wait for his work and then followup

10:36 <dvdk> i didn't call for a full device tree for mips. just for some config to pass from boot loader to kernel...

10:37 <dvdk> maybe cmdline would do?

10:37 <roh> well.. wouldnt be the worst idea to do proper devicetree and wait till then. lets wait what blogic has to say

11:01 <mth> there is already a config option to parse mtd partitioning from the kernel command line, afaik

11:07 <dvdk> well, then problem solved? For a "big" installation we'd only have to change uboot env. vars and install the larger root ubifs, no?

11:14 <mth> probably; I haven't used the feature yet, but I saw it when browsing menuconfig

12:34 <kyak> how do oy ulike it, wpwraks?

12:35 <kyak> s/oy/you/s/ulike/like/s/wpwraks/wpwrak

12:35 <qi-bot> kyak meant: "how do you like it, wpwrak?"

12:35 <kyak> now, it must do the same, but automatically :)

12:36 <kyak> drunk speech translator

13:13 <wpwrak> kyak: ah, nice...

13:13 <wpwrak> s/ah/wheee/s/nice/EXCELLENT/s/.../!!11!/

13:13 <qi-bot> wpwrak meant: "!!11!!!11!!!11!!!11!!!11!!!11!!!11!!!11!."

13:13 <wpwrak> hmm :)

13:13 <wpwrak> close ;-)

13:44 <blogic> roh: yes

13:44 <blogic> i have experimental patches for DT on MIPS

13:44 <blogic> lmo will switch all devices to DT and not accept new target unless they are DT conformant

17:03 <erikkugel> Hi guys, just a quick question about building the software image. When I run make, config still asks something around 20 question about various modules, including Ethernet Gadget, ALSA and LCD. I'm curious if anyone else had seen this? I'm building the latest Novermber image...

17:16 <dvdk> erikkugel: I guess the kernel config is just not up to date with the kernel version used. slightly unclean. the proper fix is usually to run 'yes "" | make config' or something to update the config for the newer kernel (applying defaults)

17:17 <erikkugel> That sounds great, I'll try it out, the main reason I'm asking is for the Debian script we have on the wiki. Thanks for the lead dvdk!

20:20 <qi-bot> [commit] Werner Almesberger: m1/patches/rtems: added milkymist-midi-opt.patch (master) http://qi-hw.com/p/wernermisc/f331607

20:25 <qi-bot> [commit] Werner Almesberger: midigen/: MIDI traffic generator (master) http://qi-hw.com/p/wernermisc/395458b

23:40 <kristianpaul> wpwrak: you sent M1 related patches to qi list and not copy to mm dev list for some sepacial reason?

23:41 <wpwrak> argh

23:41 <wpwrak> they were meant to go to the other list, of course

23:41 <kristianpaul> sure :-)

23:42 <kristianpaul> s/sepacial/special

23:46 <wpwrak> thanks for the heads up ! :)