[fpc-devel] Bounty for MIPS

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Andrew Haines wrote:
> On 01/30/12 07:19, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>> Nikolai Zhubr wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> 29.01.2012 19:32, Jy V:
>>> [...]
>>>> on the WNDR3800 the OpenWRT installed gives
>>>> root at OpenWrt:~# uname -a
>>>> Linux OpenWrt 2.6.32.27 #5 Wed Dec 21 01:59:33 CET 2011 mips GNU/Linux
>>> I've got wndr3800 too, and moreover I don't use it for the moment. So
>>> instead of collecting dust it could do something usefull. Installing
>>> debian on it will probably not be as quick and easy as openwrt but
>>> still if debian mips userspace is able to run on it, I could give it a
>>> try and then ssh will be available for FPC developers if installation
>>> succeeds. It is apparently big endian though. Would it make sense to try?
>> Bear in mind that there's Debian for both endiannesses of MIPS, I'm
>> running mipsel via Qemu to reasonable effect. Experience with small ARM
>> systems suggests that having enough memory is crucial, 128Mb with swap
>> to 512 should be OK but these days I'd not like to try smaller.
>>
>> But I don't know to what extent trying to implement the compiler and
>> runtimes for mips and mipsel simultaneously would complicate things.
>>
> 
> I spent a little time researching qemu with MIPS but couldn't find
> anything current. Can you give me some pointers on setting that up?

http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Qemu_and_other_emulators

Note that on that page I've rolled several Debian guest systems together 
into one section, showing appropriate differences in configuration files 
etc. Some of the scripts I've given are probably a bit idiosyncratic, 
but they're what I've found has worked for me over the 5+ years I've 
been using Qemu on various systems.

Most guest systems are built (not by me) to expect that they can display 
their console in an xterm. I normally start up in a VNC session, then 
log in over SSH.

Please yell if anything's unclear.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]