Re: Need people to help with kernel updates

[Wilko Meyer]

Hi Leo,

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:

> Yes, the hashes of the kernel source code and linux-libre's "deblobbing"
> scripts have to be updated. I have some scripts that fetch and calculate
> the hashes (attached).

Thanks for sharing these scripts with me, I've had a look into them to
get familiar with them & so far they seem pretty useful!

> I'm not a kernel developer or expert. The upstream defaults for kernel
> 'settings' are sensible. We usually differ from the defaults by enabling
> support for lots of hardware.

Sounds reasonable, supporting as much hardware as possible seems
feasible for a generic config for a kernel build.

> My impression is that x86_64-linux is by far the most popular platform
> for Guix users, and then aarch64-linux, and then the rest.
>
> Architectural support is a problem of the type "What came first: the
> chicken or the egg?" So, if anyone wants to improve support for these
> other architectures, you'll be making an egg from scratch, in the hope
> that people will start using the kernels :)

Yes, imho we're still a few years away from seeing more RISC-V
systems. In terms of ARM, I do see some u-boot packages for SBCs in
bootloaders.scm, so I assume people are using them, but I agree that
x86_64 should have by far the biggest share.

> I invite you to choose, email or IRC :)

Mail sounds good to me! (I'm rather sporadically active on IRC, so mail
usually is a better bet)

> To summarize, this work needs regular but brief attention. There's not
> much feedback from the community, so we do our best and make sure the
> basics work before pushing (reboot and connect to the internet). I'm
> eager to help grow the community of people working on this, and can help
> answer questions and give advice about things like the configs.

Thank you for this. I've seen the recent thread on making linux-libre
6.5 the default kernel[0] and will have some time at hand later on
today. I could try to prepare a patch set doing this to get more
familiar with the process, which would then need a review. WDYT?

[0]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-10/msg00027.html

-- 
Kind regards,

Wilko Meyer
w@wmeyer.eu