Current state of the Linaro toolchain

Registered by Michael Hope

This is an open session to discuss the current state of the Linaro toolchain, our outputs, and what could be improved.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
None
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
Yao Qi
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

The next six months:
 * GCC
 * GDB
 * Library tuning
 * OpenOCD
 * Binutils related performance
 * Developer tools

Review of upcoming sessions:
 Future Linaro toolchain areas
Tuesday:
 Toolchain consumption models
 Cross-compilation environment
 Using QEMU for demonstration
 LTTng
 gdbserver
 Current and future GDB plans
Wednesday:
 Eclipse CDT support
 ARM cross-compiler packages
Thursday:
 NEON/vectoriser direction
 Performance inside GCC
 ARM specific library tuning
 Performance outside GCC
Friday:
 OpenOCD
 Hard float

People's main areas
Rotation into other areas
Priorities
Scheduling
Particular blueprints

- Current state of Linaro toolchain
  * 2010.10 release http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-toolchain/2010-October/000363.html
  * Linaro GCC:
  * Linaro GDB: Better test suite pass rate on ARM and even on x86, compared with FSF GDB 7.2. (Can we claim on this?)
  * Valgrind: "developer preview" http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-dev/2010-September/001001.html
  * ltrace:

- To be improved
  * Linaro GCC
     ** Performance is one of our focus, and can be better. How to keep performance advantage against FSF GCC? How to avoid speed regression?
     ** .....
  * Oprofile: (need kernel support)
  * QEMU: Performance?
  * Actively collect feedback from users. We've done a lot of things, such as bug fix, performance tuning, and new features development, but we don't know how much benefit users get from our work, for example,
       ** When code size optimization implementation is done, can we measure how much code size is reduced on linux kernel and other application?
       ** When neon auto-vect is done, how this enhancement benefit other applications?

- Near term areas:
  * LTO - get it up and running, get it robust
  * PGO - get it up and running

(?)

Work Items