Red Hat developers have announced the initial support for the RISC-V architecture in the CentOS Stream 10 repository, which serves as the basis for the development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10. Previously, packages were released for the x86_64 (x86_64_v3 in RHEL 10), Aarch64, ppc64le (POWER9), and s390x (IBM z14) architectures. Red Hat also presented experimental builds of RHEL 10 for RISC-V systems, developed jointly with SiFive.
Currently, most of the patches that solve problems with building and running various packages on riscv64 systems have already been integrated into the CentOS Stream git repository. Some patches have not yet been transferred to the main repository and remain in separate git branches, which are planned to be published on July 1, along with bootable builds ready for running on SiFive HiFive Premier P550 boards. After the builds are published, a separate Koji server will be launched in the build infrastructure on RISC-V equipment and work will continue on transferring the created fixes to the main projects (upstream).
The Rocky Linux project, aimed at creating a free RHEL build capable of taking the place of the classic CentOS, went further and announced official support for RISC-V systems (riscv64gc) in Rocky Linux 10. Rocky Linux 10 will support StarFive VisionFive 2 (VF2) and SiFive HiFive Premier P550 boards, as well as launch in the QEMU emulator, similar to RISC-V builds from the Fedora project. The possibility of implementing support for Milk-V and Banana Pi boards is being considered.
The RISC-V architecture has been given the status of alternatively supported and, unlike the primary architectures (x86_64, Aarch64, ppc64le, and s390x), will not block releases for other architectures. The presence of RISC-V-specific issues in packages will not stop the publication of builds of these packages for other architectures.
When working on the VisionFive 2 board and in QEMU, the standard kernel from RHEL 10 will be used, and when working on the SiFive HiFive Premier P550 series boards, a separate kernel from the hardware manufacturer will be used. The build is being developed in cooperation with the Fedora project. The release time of Rocky Linux 10 has not yet been announced.
Additionally, it is worth noting the initiative of the Alma Linux project to create a version of the EPEL 10 (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository for the x86-64-v2 architecture. Unlike the RHEL 10 distribution, which supplies packages with optimizations for the x86-64-v3 microarchitecture, the Alma Linux distribution creates separate builds for the x86-64-v2 microarchitecture, which are supported in parallel with the basic x86-64-v3 builds. From now on, builds for x86-64-v2 in Alma Linux will cover not only the main repository, but also the EPEL repository. Compared to x86-64-v2, support for x86-64-v3 covers the AVX, AVX2, BMI2, FMA, LZCNT, MOVBE, and SXSAVE processor extensions. Support for x86-64-v2 allows maintaining compatibility with CPUs older than Intel Haswell and AMD Excavator, designed before 2013.
Source: opennet.ru
