[llvmlinux] Testing Android on LAVA

Behan Webster behanw at converseincode.com
Mon Nov 25 23:28:25 UTC 2013


Sorry for the delay. I was away teaching a course last week, and am only
just catching up now...

On 11/18/13 09:33, Renato Golin wrote:
> Hi LAVA folks,
>
> I don't know if you guys know, but Android is moving to LLVM for the
> next release or so. As such, we'll need to do a lot of testing between
> now and next release to make sure each component can be compiled (and
> runs correctly) with LLVM on an incremental basis.
Awesome!

> We're trying to come up with a way for remotely testing the Linux
> kernel booting on ARM devices, more specifically an Android stack, and
> I'm finding it hard to do that with my home equipment. Doing that in
> LAVA would be ideal, and I know the Android team does it already, but
> our constraints could be a little different.
>
> Basically, there are two fronts:
>
> 1. Building Android components with LLVM, using a GCC-compiled kernel
> booting on an ARM board, in LAVA. This is something we should work
> internally on how to do it, and it'll be between Android, LAVA and
> Toolchain groups.
>
> 2. Building the Linux kernel with LLVM, and using a GCC-compiled image
> (like stock CyanogenMod) to test the kernel. We don't have such a
> kernel (many patches), but the LLVMLinux guys do, and that's where
> they come in.
>
> On the second case, the topic of this email, we'd have to liaise with
> them to fire jobs at LAVA from their own infrastructure (originally,
> manually only), and that might need some thinking. But ultimatelly, we
> want to have those jobs running on LAVA, so that later on we'd be able
> to have a third layer: Linux+Android built with LLVM with the same
> system level tests.
>
> Since the LLVMLinux guys don't have access to much ARM hardware, and
> since it's easier for us to scale (or to re-define) hardware
> requirements, having them running on LAVA makes even more sense.
>
> Is this something we can do? Is this being done already? Is this just
> a question of legal/corporate decision, or is there any technical
> issues we have to look into?
We've merely been using CyanogenMod for our (albeit minimal) Android
testing since it was what supported the Android devices we had to work
with. Using AOSP would be preferable.

The issue right now, as I understand it, is that most Android devices
have their own kernel tree, which often is based on the SoC's vendor
Android kernel tree, and not mainline, nor the Google Android kernel tree.

> Android folks,
>
> It might make more sense if you guys just grab their kernel and build
> the Android system based on that internally, so that we don't need
> external access to job submissions in LAVA, but that would mean work
> from you guys to patch it up, and that might not be in the roadmap for
> the next months. Is that a feasible route?
The LLVMLinux project maintains a set of patches on top of mainline. We
port to specific kernels for testing purposes, but we don't actually
have our own project kernel. We do have patches for the original N7
kernel however.

I'd suggest we agree to a platform upon which to test, and then the
patches can be ported to that particular kernel tree.

Behan

-- 
Behan Webster
behanw at converseincode.com



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