Fwd: Re: [gentoo-doc] Arm Gentoo Handbook

["Raúl Porcel" <armin76@gentoo.org>]

On 10/05/2011 11:43 PM, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 02:46:54PM -0400, wireless wrote:
>> What currently links to the Gentoo handbook for ARM is
>> deprecated!
>> 
>> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-arm.xml?part=1&chap=5
>>
>>
>> 
Why not link to this doc?
>> http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/trimslice/install.xml
>> 
>> Lots of new arm netbooks are here and no doubt many different 
>> offerings are on the way!
> 
> Raúl,
> 
> Apart from owning an Eepad Transformer, I know nothing of Gentoo
> Linux/ARM installations. Any thoughts on your part on how we can
> ensure that our documentation stays of high quality here?
> 
> Wkr, Sven Vermeulen
> 

Hi Sven,

Unfortunately i do not have any suggestion of how we could enhance our
documentation in this aspect.

ARM is very different from other, more common, architectures. If we
look at the handbook, we have some troubles at the beginning. Each SoC
has its own specific stuff regarding installation. For example, most
of the OMAP SoCs require an SD-card with specific partition layout.
Some devices have the kernel in the flash memory, some devices lack
flash memory(pandaboard f.ex), so the kernel+bootloader is in external
storage.

Every different SoC needs its own kernel and unfortunately most of the
devices aren't supported in the mainline kernel(yet).

If you look at the documentation i've done:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/pandaboard/install.xml
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/sheevaplug/install.xml
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/tegra2/install.xml
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/trimslice/install.xml

you'll see that only some small parts are common among all of them.

And although the tegra250 dev kit and the trimslice use the same SoC
as your Transformer or the also famously known Toshiba AC100,
different procedures are required for all of them, and the kernel for
each device only supports said device.

These big differences makes one page per device the only option, IMHO.
I'm open to alternatives. In other distros, the use of
installers(ubuntu) or device/SoC-specific images(archlinuxarm) hide
this issue.

On our case, we do architecture-specific stage3s. armv7a is one
architecture, in the market there are different SoCs that are
compliant to such architecture: TI OMAP4, Freescale i.MX5, Nvidia
Tegra2, etc...
And those examples i just said use, for example, different serial
ports: OMAP4(ttyO2), i.MX5(ttymxc0) and Tegra2 uses the default ttyS0.

The current ARM handbook was written in 2004 or so, and was designed
for a device that is uncommon nowadays, old, and slow.

IMHO removing the current handbook and pointing to one page per device
handbooks would be the way to go.

Thanks