announcing the availability of packages for the Arm architecture

[Dave Hayes]

On 10/30/12 07:18, Ian Lepore wrote:
> All in all, I have the impression that not many people "use" freebsd on
> arm at all.

Just getting to the point of "using" it is quite time intensive. I ran 
out of time trying to get my dreamplug to where I want it. These issues 
were in my way (this was some time ago, check the list for dates):

  - install requires non-trivial patches and kernel config
  - building ports on the device itself is dog slow (I likely need to 
put a swap partition on a usb stick to do that since the machine has no 
swap in the first place)
  - no qemu support to use faster machines to emulate arm to build ports
  - cross compiling ports is too dangerous

I'm not an average user, but I had to stash this idea just the same
due to time constraints. Also, as you point out, most developers here 
seem to be on -current (I believe this is version 10), I can't justify 
moving to 10 since most of my supported base is at 8. I compromised 
already and went to 9 since getting the dreamplug to work with 8 was 
even more daunting.

I'm not saying anyone must work on these things, I know how open source 
is. I'm just saying there's a huge barrier to entry for "users" of these 
boards. Maybe the Raspberry PI estrus will change that? I hope so, I 
like this dreamplug since it seems to be the only inexpensive ARM 
machine that has dual gigabit ethernet interfaces. I just need a 
man-month to get it to where it's usable... :)
-- 
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave at jetcafe.org
 >>>> *The opinions expressed above are entirely my own* <<<<

The only person who needs a contract is one who cannot be
trusted.