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Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

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Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#141

Post by actionfromafar »

bitwize wrote: post #87
actionfromafar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Huh, this CPU is kind of snappy running native code now. What should we do?" "Let's move application development to Python then, I suppose." "Thanks, that fixed it." Probably what happened in my 55" smart TV dev team.

Definitely happened on the OLPC. What's worse, they made a "throbber" effect by string substituting a different color into an SVG, and then reparsing the SVG, for each color it fades through. That's the kind of coding quality the OLPC project had. That's why it failed, and it probably also factored into why they disabled the view source button.

It also failed because it took ages to release anything useful. It took years, and suddenly smartphones were upon us all, and OLPC shrunk from a special niche to a tiny niche.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#142

Post by ChrisRR »

RantyDave wrote: post #46
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the Raspberry Pi B+ was released (2014), the ARM core it used was already 11 years old (using the ARM1176 core from 2003). IIRC the original Pi used leftover chips from a TV box, which is the kind of product that IME never ships more compute than they have to, for price reasons.

Phones, not TV's, but that's pretty much the idea. Even better, the ARM core was tacked on as a sort of "dammit, I supposed we'll have to run applications" kinda thing and isn't even necessarily initialised during boot. Raspberry Pi's actually boot on a really fringe processor called a VideoCore. Arguably the GPU bootstraps the CPU, which makes my brain hurt.

Not strictly either/or. Just used in whatever people wanted to use it for.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#143

Post by _chu1 »

jenadine wrote: post #20
johnklos wrote: post #4

You'll see a whole bandwagon of people saying things like, "supporting old hardware is BAD! It takes time and money that nobody has!", as though someone needs to be hired to sit around and do nothing but pore over code and constantly rewrite code for old hardware. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, but since when has evidence mattered when it comes to defending the right of big business / big distro to do wh…

The thing with free software is that you are in no position to demand anything. If the maintainer don't feel like supporting your hardware, they don't have to. But the beauty of free software is that you can always do it yourself. (Or pay someone to do it)

This is true for Windows. Free software has helped keep operating systems like Windows XP and 7 still modern and secure, and many applications have been patched to work on these older systems. Here is for instance a port of Firefox Quantum to XP and a fork of Chromium maintaining support for 7, but I like to stick to the last Ungoogled Chromium version because I hate Google.

https://github.com/Feodor2/Mypal68 https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#144

Post by [deleted] »

account42 wrote: post #139
deaddodo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raspbian existed well before ARMv6 support dropped off. It's been their main distro from the outset, but mainstream distros with ARM builds only removed support for ARMv6 in the last 1-3 years (depending on distro).

Pretty sure Debian's armhf images have always required ARMv7 or at least for much longer than 3 years. There are also armel images but those don't use hardware floats which makes them much less performant than what the original Pi is capable of. Pretty sure that that mismatch is why raspian exists in the first place.

[deleted]

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#145

Post by johnklos »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #72
johnklos wrote: post #4

You'll see a whole bandwagon of people saying things like, "supporting old hardware is BAD! It takes time and money that nobody has!", as though someone needs to be hired to sit around and do nothing but pore over code and constantly rewrite code for old hardware. There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, but since when has evidence mattered when it comes to defending the right of big business / big distro to do wh…

Your stance is: 1/ Old hardware is free to support because the software for it just keeps working 2/ Lazy Linux people didn't test the software that stopped working on old hardware Those two things you believe to be true are inconsistent with one another. For example, in this context. What you're missing is that code changes to do new stuff and sometimes those changes are incompatible with old hardware or operating s…

You're generalizing, and doing so with poor assumptions. Supporting old hardware isn't about cost. If one wanted to compare the cost of simply maintaining code with the cost of adding features, supporting new hardware, and so on, it'd be hard to even measure maintenance.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation should be running two Pis of every kind with the newest version of their official OS and the next older one, running automated tests. This isn't hard, nor is it time consuming after it's set up.

The real issue is that people change things in ways that affect older hardware, which is fine, but they should test those changes. If they don't want to, they shouldn't be making those changes. Period.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#146

Post by rbanffy »

kjs3 wrote: post #117
rbanffy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of devices basically built on a DSP There were many X terminals running off nothing but a Texas 34010, which was a very DSP-like CPU that ended up in a lot of high-end graphics acceleration boards for PCs and Macs (and Unix workstations). The fact it could boot up an X server is quite extraordinary. I wonder what the VideoCore looks like to the programmer.

The fact it could boot up an X server is quite extraordinary. Since it was designed explicitly to serve that purpose, I'm not sure why it's 'extraordinary'. Disclaimer: I spent time at a 34010 X terminal shop.

> Since it was designed explicitly to serve that purpose,

I never imagined that. Now I'm surprised there were no desktop computers based on it. I knew the Intel 860 and 960 were designed as computers and got some usage as that, but I never knew the 34010 and 34020 were like that.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#147

Post by rbanffy »

brianshaler wrote: post #125
devmor wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidebar but it’s very annoying how it now takes me a moment to think if people are talking about a social media website or an open source graphical server when I see “X” being discussed in a tech context.

With rare exceptions, the social media website tends to be referred to as "X formerly Twitter" or just "Twitter" for short

Just call it Twitter. Let's deny Elon the pleasure ;-)

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#148

Post by amatecha »

ninepoints wrote: post #52
amatecha wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, what? It's weird to assume "clang++ -Wall -o t t.cc" should produce a binary that runs on the architecture we're currently using?

You think most clang devs test on pre arm7 architectures? (And I don't mean in a cross-compiling sense)

I expect a compile to succeed correctly for any architecture listed in `--print-targets` when I compile a barebones .c/.cpp file on one of those architectures.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#149

Post by pjmlp »

treyd wrote: post #119
xnzakg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet that instead of python it's JavaScript and a webapp pretending to be a native application.

If it's an LG TV this is literally true. They bought webOS specifically for this purpose. Meanwhile Roku invented a runtime/language (BrightScript) and mandated its use to at least enforce a minimum quality standard and throw away cruft.

WebOS supports Qt as well.

Re: Clang now makes binaries an original Pi B+ can't run

#150

Post by WirelessGigabit »

rschu1ze wrote: post #116

The database I work on (ClickHouse) tries hard to stay compatible with really old hardware. The standard ARM binaries require Armv8.2 from 2016 (available in Raspberry Pi 2 >=2) and x86 binaries run on hardware from around 2010 (SSE4.2 + pclmul* instructions for fast CRC). We also build (but don't test using CI) binaries for Armv8.0 and SSE2-only systems. A quick install script downloads and unpacks the right binary…

I think in those cases it actually serves all your customers to do multiple builds so that they can pick and choose the one that matches their architecture the closest.
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