Re: Revisiting Espresso (Wii U) Support

Hi Kurt,

On Fri, 2025-08-08 at 18:23 +0000, Kurt Stine wrote:
> Back in February I sent an email to this list about potentially getting a
> Debian ports Wii U SMP build made. Just wanted to revisit it since the
> conversation fizzled out.
>  
> A non-SMP build of Debian will boot and run on the Wii U, but there’s a
> lot more performance you can get out of the system if you can utilize
> all three cores.
>  
> A separate Debian ports build is needed because atomic locking doesn’t work
> properly on the Wii U’s Espresso CPU:https://gitlab.com/linux-wiiu/linux-wiiu/-/issues/20
>  
> SMP patches for GCC and glibc work, and are available here: https://gitlab.com/linux-wiiu/smp-patches
>  
> I could provide multiple Wii Us as build machines if that’s needed.

You basically have two options that sound feasible to me:

a) You bootstrap your own Debian powerpc port with the patches applied
   with the help of the rebootstrap project [1]. With the bootstrapped
   packages you can then set up your own buildds and wanna-build server
   to build Debian packages for the Wii U.

b) You set your own instance of openSUSE OBS [2] and set up a builder
   for openSUSE powerpc with GCC and glibc with your custom patches.

Let me know what you prefer and I can give you some hints on how to get
started. As for creating a port for the Wii U in Debian Ports, I think
that is not really likely due to the very low userbase.

Adrian

> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/HelmutGrohne/rebootstrap
> [2] https://openbuildservice.org/download/

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer
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