[CentOS-announce] Release of CentOS-7 (alpha candidate) for AArch64 platforms

[Jim Perrin]

We are pleased to announce the public alpha release of CentOS Linux 7
for AArch64 compatible hardware.

This is the initial alpha release based on CentOS Linux  7 1503 (
Rebuilt from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 sources ), with architecture
and modifications patching as necessary. Because this hardware is very
new and support for it is still evolving, there is no expectation for
kernel ABI compatibility.
Additionally, until the alpha period ends both the OS repository and the
Updates repository are subject to change.

This release was built on an X-Gene system from Applied Micro. We are
working to test against other platforms to ensure broad compatibility.

========
Download

You can find the install tree and repositories at
http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/aarch64/

While the build is in alpha, we are not releasing full isos as you would
traditionally find with the x86_64 builds. Please use the boot.iso which
has been pre-configured for a network install, or pxe from a locally
hosted mirror of the installation tree.

We plan to make disk images available soon to help vendors bootstrap
their platforms.

============
Installation


Installation guides and documentation will be provided via the CentOS
wiki, at http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/AArch64
Because several packages are not yet available, the group information
has been reduced and the only available installation option is
'minimal'. If you perform kickstart based installs, please note the only
available group is currently 'Core'. We will improve upon this
throughout the alpha process.


============
Contributing

The AArch64 effort is meant to be a community effort as part of the
AltArch SIG (http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch), and
we welcome enthusiasts and vendors to contribute patches, fixes,
documentation, etc. In the AArch64 Extras repository, we have provided
the mock package and dependencies so that community members can more
easily contribute, as well as testing their own builds locally. Please
submit patches, fixes, etc to the Arm-Dev list
(http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/arm-dev) for discussion and
acceptance.

We encourage vendors to come and join this effort, we have a lose
organization focused on the alternative architectures build process and
welcome interaction at the group level. Please get in touch with me
(jperrin at centos.org)  or K Singh ( kbsingh at centos.org ) to find out more
details.

The wider CentOS Ecosystem is also welcome to engage with us, both at
the project and code level. If you are working with a project that
interfaces, manages or develops on top
of CentOS, specially in the virtualization, cloud, container and
infrastructure management areas - we would love to have you guys get
involved. While we don't have a lot of resources, we are working with
a few vendors to build up a community resource pool that we would
encourage other projects to share their development, testing and
delivery around CentOS Linux for aarch64.


In the next few days, we'll be adding a branch to git for modified
packages so that patches are available to the community, as well as
providing a repository for the debug-info packages.


==================================
Coming Soon // Future Improvements


* Rebase to 4.1rc kernel
* Improve package and group availability
* Add additional hardware support
* Disk images to support install via dd


-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77