[OE-core] MIPS vs MIPS32 tunings -- summary and questions

Wed Apr 18 11:30:20 UTC 2012

On 16.04.2012 17:30, Mark Hatle wrote:
> On 4/16/12 10:15 AM, Andreas Oberritter wrote:
>> On 16.04.2012 16:42, Richard Purdie wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2012-04-16 at 15:55 +0200, Andreas Oberritter wrote:
>>>> On 10.04.2012 21:28, Andreas Oberritter wrote:
>>>>> On 10.04.2012 19:53, Mark Hatle wrote:
>>>>>> We still do not have a clean answer for how to resolve the
>>>>>> concerns in
>>>>>> the recent thread "conf/machine/include: Cleanup MIPS tunings to
>>>>>> match
>>>>>> README".  The following is in response to a request I received to
>>>>>> summarize the discussion so far, and include the options to
>>>>>> resolve the
>>>>>> issue for the current OE-Core release.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you are interested in this, please be sure to read until the end
>>>>>> before commenting.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Background:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> About 2 weeks ago, in response to a number of patches sent for
>>>>>> PowerPC
>>>>>> issues, I set to the task of documenting and cleaning up the various
>>>>>> tune files.  It was discovered that since they were originally
>>>>>> implemented, a number of minor conflicts and defects had crept
>>>>>> into the
>>>>>> system.  The recent patch set added a number of README files and
>>>>>> attempted to resolve any duplication, or confusion between items.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> During this work it was discovered that there were two tunings that
>>>>>> produced the same package architecture:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips (tune), optimized for mips1 - o32 ABI, produced packages with a
>>>>>> "mips" arch
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips32 (tune), optimized for mips32 - o32 ABI, produced packages also
>>>>>> with a "mips" arch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While "mips1" should work on a "mips32" system, the reverse is not
>>>>>> true.  There was no way to distinguish, in a package feed, the
>>>>>> difference between the two sets of binaries.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I updated the MIPS tune files to resolve this issue.  The result was:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips (tune), mips1 - o32 ABI, produced packages with a "mips" arch
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips32 (tune), mips32 - o32 ABI, produced packages with a "mips32"
>>>>>> arch
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This lead to the thread mentioned above.  At first there were
>>>>>> concerns
>>>>>> that the GNU target arch had changed (from mips to mips32), this
>>>>>> was not
>>>>>> the case.  The only change is in the produced package arch names.  So
>>>>>> the package feeds and image generation are the only components
>>>>>> affected
>>>>>> by this change.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> After various discussion with folks, such as Khem Raj, it is unlikely
>>>>>> that anyone would be using oe-core with a "mips1" target.  There
>>>>>> may be
>>>>>> some mips3 or mips4 targets, but we find it highly unlikely based
>>>>>> on our
>>>>>> current experience. Khem suggested resolving this my simply making
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> "mips" include mips32 as the default optimization.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Image generation was verified to produce the same images before and
>>>>>> after this change for the qemumips target.  I am unable to verify the
>>>>>> package feeds, as I do not have a suitable setup for this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So possible solutions to this particular issue, which we do need on
>>>>>> prior to the upcoming release:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) Revert the behavior and match that last release.  We have two
>>>>>> tunes
>>>>>> that produce different binaries w/ the same "mips" package arch.
>>>>>>     * This preserves previous behavior, but IMHO continues to
>>>>>> implement
>>>>>> the defect
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips (tune) - mips1 processor, o32 ABI - mips package arch
>>>>>> mips32 (tune) - mips32 processor, o32 ABI - mips package arch
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2) Keep it as it is currently checked in.  Provide the ability to
>>>>>> build
>>>>>> a basic "mips" and a more optimized "mips32" tuned target and
>>>>>> package set.
>>>>>>     * This fixes the defect and provides the opportunity for
>>>>>> "mips" to be
>>>>>> a basic common package arch, while mips32 (or additional mips3?
>>>>>> mips4?
>>>>>> mips32r2?) tunes could be used to augment this for specific systems.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> mips (tune) - mips1 processor, o32 ABI - mips package arch
>>>>>> mips32 (tune) - mips32 processor, o32 ABI - mips32 package arch
>>>>>
>>>>> If the tune should reflect the optimization, then mips should be
>>>>> renamed
>>>>> to mips1 and specified explicitly using -march=mips1, in order to
>>>>> protect against changing defaults when using a newer compiler.
>>>>> However,
>>>>> as Phil pointed out, there are many more optimization settings,
>>>>> e.g. -O2
>>>>> vs. -Os, that aren't encoded into the package arch, so the goal to
>>>>> have
>>>>> distinct package archs for different binaries won't be reached.
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't see what a common "mips" package arch would give us. Within
>>>>> OE,
>>>>> you'd usually compile all your applications for the package arch of
>>>>> your
>>>>> target system. Adding compatible package archs to the feed just
>>>>> increases the complexity of online updates.
>>>>>
>>>>>> 3) Define only one mips tune, with a target package arch of "mips".
>>>>>> Changing the basic mips tune, and corresponding mips package arch to
>>>>>> include mips32 optimizations and instructions.
>>>>>>     * This preserves the "mips" tune, but changes the behavior of the
>>>>>> tune from default compiler, to mips32 optimization
>>>>>>     * Anyone requiring mips3 or mips4 will need to add a tune, and
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> tune will not be compatible with "mips"
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, mips1 could be added back anytime if anybody starts using it.
>>>>>
>>>>>> mips (tune) - mips32 processor, o32 ABI - mips package arch
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    3a) Preserve the mips32 tune entries, but define it as being
>>>>>> equal to
>>>>>> mips
>>>>>>        * Preserves the tune entries for compatibility, but is anyone
>>>>>> directly using them?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>    3b) Remove the mips32 tune entries -- effectively eliminating
>>>>>> mips32
>>>>>> as a tune
>>>>>>        * Removes the tune entries (cleans up the tunes), no
>>>>>> compatibility
>>>>>> -- but it's unlikely anyone was directly specifying "mips32" as their
>>>>>> machine's DEFAULTTUNE.
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually I have (had) machines specifying mips32el and mips32el-nf as
>>>>> their DEFAULTTUNEs, which your first patch, that got applied upstream,
>>>>> broke. But I've already switched to use your latest patch using mipsel
>>>>> and mipsel-nf instead, (which I prefer over the former).
>>>>>
>>>>>> My recommendation is either 2 or 3.  The 3a/b variation is simply an
>>>>>> implementation detail to me, and I will be happy to implement it
>>>>>> either
>>>>>> way if this is the chosen direction.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm fine with either way that restores mips/mipsel for mips32 targets
>>>>> *before the release*, because the online update feeds broke and all
>>>>> packages had to be built again from scratch.
>>>>
>>>> Richard, can you please state your opinion about this issue?
>>>>
>>>> The mips package feed (e.g. qemumips) is now broken since weeks. Can I
>>>> expect this to be corrected before the release, or should anybody
>>>> relying on mipsel package feeds stop using oe-core's
>>>> meta/conf/machine/include/mips/arch-mips.inc?
>>>
>>> Sorry, I got distracted by a ton of other issues. I think the cleanup
>>> did make sense and things are more correct now, its just a shame about
>>> the package feed naming issue.
>>>
>>> There comes a point we need to try and clean up some of these things so
>>> my proposal would be that people who don't want to use the new naming
>>> set the following in their distro config:
>>>
>>> MIPSPKGSFX_VARIANT_tune-mips32el = "mipsel"
>>>
>>> and then should still be able to use the arch-mips.inc from OE-Core.
>>> Does that work for people?
>>
>> I wonder why this point has to be during the stabilisation phase before
>> the release, considering much less intrusive changes are not getting
>> applied.
> 
> This was a bug.  That is why it was "fixed".  I agree there is argument
> if this fix is acceptable or not, but it was a fix to a bug.  We never
> should have been generating two tunings with different run-time
> characteristics on MIPS, with the same package arch.
> 
>> Setting this variable is a partial workaround. PACKAGE_EXTRA_ARCHS also
>> broke for tune-mips32.inc, so this has to be set, too. The easiest thing
>> for everybody would however be to revert "Cleanup MIPS tunings to match
>> README" and to drop tune-mips, which was unused.
> 
> Setting it to mips/mipsel should work as the PACKAGE_EXTRA_ARCHS in
> mips32 should already have "mips" or "mipsel" in them.
> 
> I would expect this would be a reasonable upgrade path as existing
> systems know only "mips".. so we rebuild with the custom "mips" setting,
> adding in the compatible extra_archs.. (hopefully adjusting the any feed
> management mechanisms at the same time)..  And then for the "next"
> release the mips32 goes on line, and the system already knows it's
> compatible.  [or the manual mips change suggested stays.]

Mark,

now, after having repacked all binary tarballs that had mipsel or
mipsel-nf in their name and contents, and after having changed all
occurrences of mipsel and mipsel-nf in my local recipes (where
appropriate), and after having rebuilt everything from scratch again, it
came to my attention that "mipsel" in PACKAGE_EXTRA_ARCHS breaks opkg,
because no mipsel packages are being generated. That's what I told
before, right?

So please remove mipsel from PACKAGE_EXTRA_ARCHS to finally get this
working again!

Regards,
Andreas