In reply to @thefossguy:matrix.org

Yep, and I also have a working system (on a Pi with UEFI and tons of hacks). My confusion stems from the following wandering...

"If RISC-V isn't officially supported (yet), there should be a different repository I should point at, so I can get the RISC-V binaries from there."

That's why I asked here :)

NixOS is a source-based distribution: the Nixpkgs repository only specifies how to build packages (and provides an extensive x86_64 and aarch64 cache).

Not only that, but Nixpkgs has tools to change how packages are built, so if you find something that doesn't build, you can override it to fix it.

You'll find that on the latest version of nixos-unstable, a great deal of things already both cross-compile and natively compile to riscv64. It'll likely take several hours of compilation to build a complete system (esp. natively if your kernel doesn't support cpufreq scaling, since the default clock speed is 1GHz and not the full 1.5GHz), but as long as you're not hoping to use any Java packages or Haskell packages, most things will Just Work™.

In reply to @alex:tunstall.xyz

NixOS is a source-based distribution: the Nixpkgs repository only specifies how to build packages (and provides an extensive x86_64 and aarch64 cache).

Not only that, but Nixpkgs has tools to change how packages are built, so if you find something that doesn't build, you can override it to fix it.

You'll find that on the latest version of nixos-unstable, a great deal of things already both cross-compile and natively compile to riscv64. It'll likely take several hours of compilation to build a complete system (esp. natively if your kernel doesn't support cpufreq scaling, since the default clock speed is 1GHz and not the full 1.5GHz), but as long as you're not hoping to use any Java packages or Haskell packages, most things will Just Work™.

In reply to @alex:tunstall.xyz

NixOS is a source-based distribution: the Nixpkgs repository only specifies how to build packages (and provides an extensive x86_64 and aarch64 cache).

Not only that, but Nixpkgs has tools to change how packages are built, so if you find something that doesn't build, you can override it to fix it.

You'll find that on the latest version of nixos-unstable, a great deal of things already both cross-compile and natively compile to riscv64. It'll likely take several hours of compilation to build a complete system (esp. natively if your kernel doesn't support cpufreq scaling, since the default clock speed is 1GHz and not the full 1.5GHz), but as long as you're not hoping to use any Java packages or Haskell packages, most things will Just Work™.

In reply to @fgaz:matrix.org
by the way, I asked about risc-v ghc bindists here https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/23519

Guess I'll have to keep trying to cross-compile then :(

(My last attempt at cross-compiling allocates 4GB of memory and then segfaults on startup.)

In reply to @thefossguy:matrix.org

Hello everyone, I am the "maintainer" of the unmaintained minimal Arch Linux image for the VisionFive 2. Recently I tried out NixOS and am using it on my Raspberry Pi as the "main computer" (my current x86 pc died so this is a temporary measure; but it works even with 'llvmpipe' because I'm using UEFI).

I came to know about the RISC-V effort and got curious. I was checking this issue on NixOS/nixpkgs and a thread mentioned about this IRC channel. So here I am.

Are there any "Here's how to get started on the VF2" guides?