I'm just starting out on this path, so my priorities might be off... 1. Packaging of a "stable" cross-development kit, including kernel, toolchain and any other useful utilities. Saves me the time of assembling the pieces myself and saves me asking questions about problems that were fixed months ago. I know other companies provide this but I have yet to evaluate them. 2. Provision of a framework (which may already be in place - I haven't got that far yet) that provides me with a tick-list of hardware blocks that I may need to provide code for to support my particular board, and to be structured so that (as far as possible) I am adding files to the tree rather than modifying them. The framework to be arranged so that I can do it incrementally. 3. Support - not just for the development kit, but also as a source of experience and suggestions for porting to new boards. 4. Work with chip manufacturers who are slow to provide Linux drivers. Reference (rather than production quality) drivers would be better than nothing. This is obviously not a MIPS specific issue. Phil -----Original Message----- From: Kevin D. Kissell [mailto:kevink@mips.com] Sent: 22 March 2001 11:48 To: linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Subject: Embedded MIPS/Linux Needs Here at MIPS Technologies, we use Linux internally for design verification, experiments, benchmarking, etc., and as a consequence Carsten Langgaard and myself have both been active in this forum, and have tried to help the general Linux/MIPS community as best we can with the limited time that we can dedicate to the problem, in terms of suggested patches, bug fixes, cleanups, integration of needed components like the FPU emulator, etc. I have a question for those of you who are doing Linux work for *new* platforms (as opposed to the SGI/DEC legacy box support people). IF, and I emphasize the word *if*, MIPS Technologies were make a bigger investment in MIPS/Linux technology, be it kernel enhancements, cross/native tools, userland ports, libraries, or whatever, what would be your prioritized "wish list"? Feel free to respond by point-to-point email, though responses that are also copied to the mailing list might provoke some interesting and enlightening debate. Regards, Kevin K.
