Minutes August 20

Discussion

Luke created a Bugzilla account for all the interns. He asked everyone to create a new bug. He insisted again to follow the instructions and asked everyone to take initiatives.

He was talking about saying “Hello” to the mailing list, introduction about yourself, whether you are happy with the Charter, and reading the HDL workflow document about mailing list etiquette.

Luke asked to create a Wiki page and create a new bug report. Make a copy of these instructions in the new checklist page of the bug report.

Against the summary, we need to type an on-boarding checklist. After that type “TO DO”, a new email will go to the mailing list. Luke will be able to see which bug happens.

After logging in, create a bug report, once each task is done, just type “Done” and also mention the date the task was completed. Luke follows this technique. Luke explained how to create a new bug once we log in to the Bugzilla account. Bug nos. 666, 667,668 were created by interns and Luke explained how the content inside the bug can be edited. He asked everyone to log in and edit the bug fields.

Luke told us to enter the URL, put in the new checklist into that page and click “Save Changes”.

Our primary goal is to run the dev scripts. Communicating among the interns and taking initiatives and responsibilities are the most important things, Luke said.

He explained the difference between doing free software projects and working for a company. He also said there will be no managers to supervise and the dynamics of communication is also different. It is more about self motivation. He asked everyone to fill in the “about-us” page. This will help Luke to find some tasks for the interns.

Microwatt is written by a software engineer, not by a hardware engineer. It is written by Paul Mackerras, who is one of the brilliant mixes of software and hardware engineers. He has about 20 years of experience in the power instruction set. He comes up with the elegant algorithm even for the simplest of tasks. He makes sure the gate count for FPGA is good and checks the resources utilization. It has a very readable code. Some of the modules were translated from VHDL to nMigen. Microwatt design was used to create libre-soc design.

David said it can be considered as a planning tool as well, as by looking into the bugs of others we will come to know where they stand with respect to a particular task and accordingly, we can plan our tasks. If someone is stuck, ask other interns. It will be good if bugs are cross-referenced. Wiki page will have a link to this bug report and vice versa. By clicking on the question mark before your name on the about-us page, it will take you to a new page. Use somebody’s page like what to put, what you are doing, status tracking, in progress, on-boarding checklist. This is your landing page.

This page will help Luke and team to keep a track on what we are doing and send out the request for payment when it is completed.

When asked about installing Debian 10 or Debian 11, Luke said Debian 10. Comparatively if we have to run on Windows, around 300 software packages have to be installed. Debian 10 helps the libre-soc team in standardizing the process.

Action item:

1) Log in to the bugtracker to create a checklist and to complete the tasks and use the checklist to track and get everything up and running.

Luke said: Ask questions. What do you need to move on to the next step? Help each other out?