Shulie TornelRobert Wolff Hello @All - My name is Robert Wolff and I work Linaro on the 96Boards team!!! I started off with Linaro as a Technical Writer, and now I am Community Manager for the 96Boards program. I maintain several org and repositories with my team and have pushed out several open source initiatives in the last year. Is everyone familiar with 96Boards? If you would like to read more visit https://www.96boards.org/about/ - here there is in depth description of our specifications and what we do.
HI nice to meet You
I think it would be great if you could tell us a bit more about 96Boards too :)
@KSwiton nice to meet you too! :D
@Ragnar is that OpenHour Ragnar
For all 96Boards related projects, please visit: https://github.com/96boards-projects
Excellent
Does anyone have any questions about what we do at 96Boards? Or we can of course take questions about our Open Source initiatives or Open Source collaboration in general
We can start off with the couple of questions from the comment page if you're ready (https://hackaday.io/event/28431-contributing-to-open-source-development)
(So just a note for everyone who has joined us in previous Hack Chats, questions aren't posted on a spreadsheet this time -- you can post them directly on this page: https://hackaday.io/event/28431-contributing-to-open-source-development )
I found this one: "Any tips for newbies who want to contribute to open source projects? Thanks." from @ptalianos I would suggest the first step is getting familiar with git, and in my opinion getting familiar with GitHub. A LOT of Open Source projects are collaborated on through GitHub. If you can master the GitHub workflow, you are in great shape!
Manivannan Sadhasivam Best tip: Persistence is the key. Don't get embarrassed with any review comments just take it positive and learn from your mistakes :-)
There are plenty of resources out there for anyone interested in learning Git and using GitHub.
@Manivannan Sadhasivam Yes! :D its true
Most people in Open Source want to help you learn, getting your feet wet and over coming that first contribution is key
@ptalianos Even something as simple as submitting an issue or a bug report can count as a contribution. And that's where most people start.
Before contributing to any project, please do read the Contribution policy/Submission guidelines
@Manivannan Sadhasivam if you are lucky enough to be working on a project that has "guidelines or a policy" :P
Or contribute documentation. Most OS projects are sorely lacking in it.
I have a related question actually - for someone who's fairly confident in writing code and with git/github, what's the usual etiquette/process for figuring out what needs to be worked on
@Todd Yes! Documentation is hugeeeeeeee. Most Open Source projects are seriously lacking in documentation
@Andrew Usually the Issues tab
@Andrew It is nice when a repository posts a "to-do" list... But this is not always the case. The best thing to do here is to find out where there communication takes place. This could be in a mailing list, IRC, a forum, in the issues tab etc...
sometimes the code has `@TODO`'s in it also
@Andrew, Some tag issues with PR (pull request) Welcome
@Andrew You can establish a report with maintainers by simply joining their correspondence threads.
@Robert Wolff @Manivannan Sadhasivam @Sahaj Sarup @Todd That was really helpful, thank you
@albedo.decero yes, that too
@ptalianos thanks for the question :)
@Andrew Poke into the source code and if you find anything wrong, submit an issue and if people agree submit a fix also :-)
So there was a question from Chris added from a few days prior that both @Robert Wolff and @Manivannan Sadhasivam (Applications Engineer with 96Boards) addressed. Would you like to comment on that one again or expand on it for the folks here with us now?
thank you, that was a good answer - I'll definitely try IRC and such
I'll paste out Chris's comment:
"What is the easiest way to get set up to contribute patches? We hack up the Linux kernel a bit at work and I've found a few bugfixes that I'd happily contribute back upstream. I read through this: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.11/process/email-clients.html
The problem is, I only use outlook for work and gmail for non-work. Outlook isn't on the instructions and they say that gmail won't work...
The 'git send-email' man page shows instructions for using gmail, though. But if there are questions/feedback about the patches, will gmail mangle my replies?
Is there a recommended 3rd party email service to use that I can just set and forget?
I'd happily set up a new email account for this purpose. I'd prefer something web-based to avoid repeated installation/setup of clients. But I understand if using a Linux client is best -- but if that's the case, then a suggested client and setup instructions would be great. I probably wouldn't use this account for anything other than interacting with the open source community.
I thought I was maybe alone on this, but a coworker yesterday said he was trying to figure out the same thing."
For anyone who is interested, our team hangs out in IRC #96Boards and #OpenHours - for after the chat is over
@Shayna we will paste out previous answer, and I will add some stuff
super
@Manivannan Sadhasivam will paste his answer, and I will add
If you visit kernel.org there are many resources regarding this matter
You can use gmail client to send patches. You just need to turn off the HTML mode and switch to plain mode.
I personally use git send-email to send patches and mutt to reply to comments. Mutt always send emails in plain text mode, so developers often prefer it.
Robert Wolff You can find a list of email servers with pros and cons around which text bases service is best for this type of Open Source work: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.12/process/email-clients.html#email-clients
I have seen some of my colleagues who do this kind of work (more often than some) talking about Mutt
One of the best resource on submitting patches to Linux kernel:
@Manivannan Sadhasivam is that how you learned? :P
Okay, I will share something crazy with everyone
@Robert Wolff Yes of course...
we love Crazy
This is a anonymous challenge anonymous http://eudyptula-challenge.org/
Anyone who really wants to dive deep into kernel work, you can follow these 10 challenges and you will be a master by the end... if you can complete it
sorry, 20 challenges!
And if you happen to be curious about the namesake for "eudyptula"
it is a little penguin
fairy penguins! :)
I just looked it up
dawwww
hehe
the challenge is closed for new entrants now :-/
The genus Eudyptula ("good little diver") contains two species of penguin, found in southern Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. They are commonly known as the little penguin, little blue penguin, or fairy penguin. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudyptula
Well, it looks like there might be a way in... if you *really really* want
Kernel newbies
Yeah, well I am kind of interested in know what kind of Single board computers people are working with
So I'll be checking on the comments on the event page (https://hackaday.io/event/28431-contributing-to-open-source-development) if anyone is in the middle of typing something up -- but since we've covered what's there for the time being, we can open up the discussion if anyone would like to ask anything directly in the chat.
ooh - i have lots
Have you done any work with 96Boards?
i haven't, ARM is something i'm trying to get into but i haven't done much yet
i was one of the lucky few who got a CHIP for the original $9 in the kickstarter before the fulfillment issues started, but i've been using that essentially just as a linux system rather than messing with the lower level ARM stuff
And if @Robert Wolff and @Manivannan Sadhasivam have a hard stop coming up in the next while, we can wrap up then or otherwise within the next half-hour or so.
and i actually was just given an Android Things board, which is super cool but is again more about android app development in java than anything with ARM
You sound busy with board! :P
There are a couple 96Boards in AOSP right now, if you are into Android
but not Android Things.... There was an effort back in the day when Android Things was called "Brillo"
What's the standard toolbelt for developing for ARM?
You can use IAR compiler for doing microcontroller programming
or just gcc :)
@albedo.decero It will depend on your native development environment
yeah, i actually think low level ARM stuff on android is really cool
and a cheap stlink programmer
@Sahaj Sarup does work with AOSP, there is a group of folk at Linaro who work on AOSP
lots of fun stuff going on there...
maybe i'll try to put aosp on the things dev board
@Robert Wolff I can se any OS. Just looking for low cost to learn
96Boards Hikey and HiKey960 are already in the AOSP source https://source.android.com/setup/devices
albedo.decero @Manivannan Sadhasivam IAR has a "Request for Quote" form, which is where I hit a wall. :-)
@Andrew I don't think a lot of android things devices will run AOSP, which board do you have?
it's the pico i.mx6ul dev kit, i doubt it'll run it too but it could be a fun project to try
@Andrew I doubt it'll straight up run any recent versions of android
@Radomir Dopieralski Thanks for the st-link programmer pointer
So just want to let everyone know, if you are ever interested in developing on ARM, you can consider 96Boards a resource for support :) We are always here to help, and our team plans on contributing throughout 2018 to Hackaday with some fun projects ! :D
:)
oh wait it might've been a i.mx7 @Sahaj Sarup
Robert Wolff thank you for the talk! definitely a lot of great info today
oh! i.MX7 96Boards just became available through Arrow Electronics... but not so low cost ~ $100 USD
oh that's very cool!
@Andrew there may be a chance then, I've see builds running with the mesa driver for imx7
https://www.96boards.org/product/imx7-96/ It runs a vendor image of Linux desktop. for now, but future OS enablement is in the works, AFAIK. Fun little board to play with.
@Robert Wolff for sure, I like the inclusion of the 200mhz cortex m4 MCU in the SoC
yeah, i'll definitely check the linaro stuff out
@Andrew :) nice. We have a lot of fun at 96Boards
yeah - did you say you had an IRC channel? is that on freenode?
Also, every week we do an Open Source video conference call were we have fun and hang out over coffee, interview people and talk tech. it's called OpenHours. https://www.96boards.org/openhours/ We are on IRC: #OpenHours and #96Boards
@Robert Wolff Which board would you recommend for a kiosk-style presentation running modest JS CSS sprite animation in a browser?
my handle is sdrobertw
24/7 please reach out any time!
hmmm @albedo.decero
hah
Maybe @Manivannan Sadhasivam or @Sahaj Sarup can help me with this one... If you are running a browser, you will need a desktop environ or tablet environment like android / AOSP
yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Just don't know how powerful the boards with GPUs are...
I would suggest the Dragonboard 410c which is pretty mature/stable, running debian for example
DragonBoard will probably be the best
cool, I'll test
thank you, both
bye everybody, i've gotta catch a train but thanks @Robert Wolff for the talk!
You can also expect a bunch more work around DragonBoard as well, in near future.
Bye @Andrew
Thanks, @Andrew for the questions. Safe travels
oh? What kind of "lot of work"?
@albedo.decero yeah dragonboard has the gpu working with the opensource mesa driver so it would handle the animations well
@Robert Wolff @Manivannan Sadhasivam @Sahaj Sarup Under what circumstances would one prefer a 96board over SBCs like a Raspberry Pi/BBB? Thank you
@Sahaj Sarup Thanks
@ptalianos There are several circumstances.
1) Path to product: Some of our boards make the onboard SoC available for chip down design.
@ptalianos 96Boards aim for armv8. both rbp and bbb are fairly old chipsets
This will allow you to develop a product, and bring it to production without having to put the entire board inside your product.
@ptalianos My take is everything is opensource: Right from board design to boootloader/OS
@ptalianos also considering the raspi3 is technically armv8, you can't really buy that chip without the raspi if you are designing a product around it
@Manivannan Sadhasivam That's a big deal
@albedo.decero Yeah. You can use 96Boards for learning as well as contributing to Opensource. Learn by doing :D
2) Developing on 96Boards gives you options under the same ecosystem. If you want to work on Snapdragon one day, then Huawei or ActionSemi another, you have the option. All our boards follow the same form factor, all your mezzanines (Add on boards) are compatible and your development doesnt stop. You can transfer your work from one SoC to another.
A big push we are trying to make at 96Boards is universal library support. @Manivannan Sadhasivam is working on unifying our boards under the libmraa and libupm libraries, among others.
@ptalianos if you take a closer look rpi and 96boards are not on the same playing field, their goal is more focused towards educating kids, 96boards focus towards prototyping for products using the chipsets we feature, pretty much what @Robert Wolff just said
In essence, you are working with interchangeable SoC on a universal form factor with industry support and a strong path to product. However, you can still use 96Boards for educational purposes too... the cost is usually just slightly higher. On the bright side, you always get what you pay for.
Gotta bounce folks Thanks for the hospitality! I'll check out the Dragonboard!
3) Key open source developers: 96Boards is backed by some of the big names in open source development. Many of the big Arm developers use 96Boards for their work.
thanks, @albedo.decero Have a nice day!
I think this might be a good moment to ""officially"" wrap up though of course, everyone is welcome to stay and continue chatting :)
Good information there that cleared things out, thank you.
Well they are really promising, especially if a community grows and is established. It could lower the barrier to entry for people.
@ptalianos we are really trying to do this with several of our initiatives
Thank you so much to @Robert Wolff as well as @Manivannan Sadhasivam, @Sahaj Sarup and the 96Boards team for participating in today's Hack Chat
@Manivannan Sadhasivam maintains a projects org and @Sahaj Sarup help to run an open source hardware initiative for mezzanine enthusiasts with @Michael Welling as our lead maintainer
Again, you're all of course welcome to stay as long as you'd like :)
ptalianos @Robert Wolff good to hear :)
Thanks to everyone who submitted questions and participated in the discussion!
Thanks @Shayna for hosting us :-)
Thank you @Shayna and @Hackaday very much for hosting us! This was a lot of fun!
@Shayna Thank you for hosting us :)
Anytime!
and @James Lewis and @Sophi Kravitz for helping up to set everything up!
A transcript will be forthcoming in a short while
also one last thanks to @Benchoff for the well worded blog about this hack chat :D
yay @Benchoff !
:) We will hang around the chat for a while longer. If anyone wants to join us throughout the week we are always hanging in our IRC channels:
#OpenHours and #96Boards
All other inquiries and resources can be found on the 96Boards website and GitHub orgs:
Have a nice weekend, @all !
@Robert Wolff yes, the same Ragnar. For those not so familiar with OpenHours: I've joined often enough to get some free goodies, like a DragonBoard for example.
@Ragnar cause you're awesome :P We will be doing some more community giveaway very soon. With the new year and Christmas coming up, it seems fitting !
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