Re: Revisiting Espresso (Wii U) Support

Hi Adrian,

>> 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 <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 <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.

I'm open to either. Glibc and GCC should be the only source code patches. When compiling, "mcpu=espresso" and "mno-altivec" will both need to be passed to the make commands, but nothing else in-depth should be needed.

Does OBS only support running on x86? Unless I'm reading something wrong, the documentation seems to suggest it. I have a couple ARM machines that could handle cross-compile duties, but my x86 machines are relatively weak.

As far as userbase, I'd be surprised if the potential userbase for the Wii U was any smaller than x32 (would love to be surprised though!).

-- Kurt