Working today on adding support for ARM boards to propellor.

I started by adding support for generating non-native chroots. qemu-debootstrap makes that fairly simple. Propellor is able to run inside a non-native chroot too, to ensure properties in there; the way it injects itself into a chroot wins again as that just worked.

Then, added support for flash-kernel, and for u-boot installation. Installing u-boot to the boot sector of SD cards used by common ARM boards does not seem to be automated anywhere in Debian, just README.Debian files document dd commands. It may be that's not needed for a lot of boards (my CubieTruck boots without it), but I implemented it anyway.

And, Propellor.Property.Machine is a new module with properties for different ARM boards, to get the right kernel/flash-kernel/u-boot/etc configuration easily.

This all works, and propellor can update a bootable disk image for an ARM system in 30 seconds. I have not checked yet if it's really bootable.

Tomorrow, I'm going to dust off my ARM boards and try to get at least 3 boards tested, and if that goes well, will probably add untested properties for all the rest of the sunxi boards.


Today's work was sponsored by Jake Vosloo on Patreon.