Well, it seems I might have µClibc stages going again, at least for little endian initially, then I might fire up one of the SGI boxes and see about a big-endian version. For a long while, Gentoo/MIPS support for this lightweight C library was all but missing ever since an ABI change broke the µClibc port back around 2006.
I’ve tried on several occasions to build a new environment, and often I was met with technical difficulties which prevented me from producing a working environment. Recently, I downloaded Rob Landley’s Aboriginal Linux distribution, both big and little endian variants, and took it for a spin. Having done that, I’m pleased to report that I now have a µClibc chroot that’s merrily compiling various components of the Gentoo system, and will soon be sufficient to make a seed stage for bootstrapping the port once again.
This should mean new netboot images in the medium term for all little-endian ports (and proper ones too, not glibc-based hacks) and new images for SGI Indy (R4000) and O2. In theory, support for Octane and Indigo2 R10000 is possible, however the systems I have are no longer functional, only my Indy and O2 still work, thus it’s impossible for me to test media for other systems. Fingers crossed this initial build will go to plan, and we’ll have shiny new stages shortly.
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