Xenomai4 / Dovetail / EVL on Fedora 37

This is a port of Xenomai 4 / EVL to Linux Kernel 6.10.10 for Fedora 37.

The kernel-6.5.13-100.fc37.src.rpm found here comes directly from Fedora. You do not need to unpack it, I've already done that. I've included it here for completeness.

Building a Xenomai4-enabled Fedora Kernel is quite simple:

1. The build system used here is based on Fedora's own build system. It uses fedpkg and kernel.spec. It's quite a nice build system, very easy to use, and it works. One of the things I like most is that it does quite a bit of sanity checking on your defconfig files.

   To install all the required prerequisites for using fedpkg, please run the script namedinstall-fedora-dependencies.sh found here.

2. This is not an official Fedora project. I have no association or affiliation with either RedHat, or Fedora, or IBM. I used to work at IBM TJ Watson Research, in IBM Quantum, as a Compiler Engineer. I left because it was a toxic place to work.

How To Build a Xenomai4 Kernel:

1. Run the do-fedpkg-prep.sh script. This script checks that all the patches apply correctly and that the kernel can be built - in principle. The output of do-fedpkg-prep.sh is captured in fedpkg-prep.log.

2. Cleanup after do-fedpkg-prep.sh by running the cleanup-kernel.sh script.

3. Run the do-fedpkg-local.sh script. This will build the kernel. When it's finished, you will have a directory named x86_64. This is where all the RPMs will be. The output of do-fedpkg-local.sh is captured in fedpkg-local.log.

4. To avoid packaging namespace conflicts with the upstream Fedora kernel RPMs, the .buildid for this kernel is set to .xenomai, and the pkgrelease is set to 300. You will see this in the names of the resulting RPMs.

5. The patch that imports and applies all the Xenomai changes, found here, is named patch-6.5-dovetail-evl.patch.

6. Don't forget to disable EFI Secure Boot to install the RPMs. You can use the install-xenomai-kernel.sh script found here to install the RPMs after they are built.

7. I've done some preliminary testing on x86_64, but not fully comprehensive testing. This is an ongoing project for me, and I will be doing more testing along the way, which means it's very likely there will be updates.

Update 2024/10/30:

• I've been running this kernel since 2024/10/01 with zero problems.