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Debian riscv64

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Re: Debian riscv64

#21

Post by lmm »

sohrob wrote: post #16

When Debian is ported to a new architecture does that mean something special needs to happen to all of the packages in the repository for them to work on that new architecture?

Well-written applications will just work. Badly-written applications may require patches or be impractical to build at all, and some system software may not make sense on the architecture at all.

There's a whole lot of build infrastructure for Debian; by default the package maintainer doesn't need to do anything specific, building for all architectures will happen by default.

Re: Debian riscv64

#24

Post by sanxiyn »

sohrob wrote: post #16

When Debian is ported to a new architecture does that mean something special needs to happen to all of the packages in the repository for them to work on that new architecture?

Debian packages declare their supported architectures. "all" means it is architecture independent and will be available to a new architecture without rebuild. "any" means it is portable and will be available to a new architecture by rebuilding. In both cases no source change is needed.

Special packages (for example, compilers generating native code) enumerate supported architectures. For these packages, source change is needed, at least adding the name of the new architecture to the enumeration. But usually that's not the difficult part.

Re: Debian riscv64

#25

Post by MobiusHorizons »

djha-skin wrote: post #11

Any promising riscv64 computers on the market I should know about? Raspberry pi level or otherwise? What computers could I use this distro on?

Anything based on the rk3588 like the radxa rock 5b. Just be careful to note the distinction between the rk3588 variants, as some have pcie 3 and some only have pcie2.

Re: Debian riscv64

#26

Post by ac29 »

MobiusHorizons wrote: post #25
djha-skin wrote: post #11

Any promising riscv64 computers on the market I should know about? Raspberry pi level or otherwise? What computers could I use this distro on?

Anything based on the rk3588 like the radxa rock 5b. Just be careful to note the distinction between the rk3588 variants, as some have pcie 3 and some only have pcie2.

RK3588 is an ARM chip

Re: Debian riscv64

#27

Post by Uehreka »

AndyKelley wrote: post #7

Great work Debian! We already have riscv64-linux builds of Zig enabled with every CI run[1]. Happy to see that they might finally be utilized by more users soon. [1]: https://ziglang.org/download/

I may not work with Zig (yet) but it’s cool to see y’all representing yourselves like this, keep up the good work!

Re: Debian riscv64

#30

Post by erik_seaberg »

sanxiyn wrote: post #17
viraptor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would anything prevent compilers from approaching it like SSE on Intel? Check for feature presence and enable the appropriate path (if using compiler-generated code).

> Check for feature presence That is the hard part. On Intel you can use CPUID, but it is ARM policy to not expose such instructions. You can read /proc/cpuinfo, but that is Linux-specific. Edit: there is a reason for ARM policy: CPUID is a well known virtualization hazard. In fact, KVM immediately traps if you execute CPUID on guest. ARM made a good decision here. Still, it means things can't work exactly like it wo…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18542040 talks about registers with a similar purpose.
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