Re: test environments

[Sam James]

Bruno Haible <bruno@clisp.org> writes:

> Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen wrote:
>> I only have access to x86_64 systems, for which `clear_cache ()' can be a
>> no-op.  Emulators aren't of much help because they usually do not implement
>> the need for cache invalidation faithfully.  We would need the help of
>> someone with, say, an Aarch64 system.
>
> I've added info about how to get access to test environments here:
>   
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib/maint-tools.git;a=blob;f=platforms/test-environments.txt
>   
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gnulib/maint-tools.git;a=tree;f=platforms/environments

Thanks for doing that Bruno. Please also see
https://static.matoro.tk/isa-sandbox-faq.html - maybe give it a mention,
it's run by a great contributor, matoro, who is quite dedicated (CC'd).

>
> In particular, the compile farm has 4 machines with aarch64 CPU.
> Maybe you also have an Android phone with aarch64 CPU on it (and
> can install Termux in 64-bit mode on it)?

Termux is definitely worth people trying, although in my experience,
it's rather different from a usual arm64 environment (partly I think
because of seccomp filtering and such).

>
> It is correct that emulators sometimes don't implement the need for
> cache invalidation correctly; I observed this for mips too. But QEMU
> is quite good nowadays; it's better than nothing.
>

Yes, and people should keep in mind that `qemu-user` is *extremely*
convenient, avoiding the need to do a full install of a distribution
with partitioning and such...

One can just chroot in to a e.g. Gentoo stage3, or a Debian
debootstrap'd directory.

> Bruno

thanks,
sam