Re: General cross compilation 'problem'.

[Robert Schwebel <robert at schwebel dot de>]

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 11:37:29PM +0200, Leon Woestenberg wrote:
> This *is* an open-source project plug:
> 
> The www.openembedded.org guys have solved this problem.

And, of cause, PTXdist is also a GPLed alternative: 

- http://www.pengutronix.de/software/ptxdist_en.html
- Modelled after the BuildRoot concept when it started in 2002, but 
  much improved in the meantime.
- Kconfig based configuration frontend
- Very small footprint: it still fits on one disc (if you don't 
  count the patches).
- keep-it-simple principle, written in make+bash
- PC simulation of embedded targets is easily possible (compile a
  complete target natively instead of cross)
- community proven and commercially supported

> As with most open-source project, it takes some time digging in before 
> it starts getting productive, and documentation comes after product.

Well, that's probably the same with all OSS projects :-)
 
> This project took me two weeks to fully grasp; I am now happily 
> cross-building whatever comes at me (toolchains, kernels, root 
> filesystems, applications) by starting a builder and waiting. About 3000 
> packages available, ~95% of them cross-compile properly.

We have about >400 packets for PTXdist yet, steadily growing. But the
pure number was never a goal for us, the PTXdist community does more try
to work together with the upstream projects and keep the patch load
small. 

> autoconf, libtool, pkg-config is all handled correctly.

Btw, I would be interested in how you OE guys get libtool right; it
usually picks up libraries from the host: when you for example call it
with -lsomelib, libtool makes absolute paths out of it, without caring
about SYSROOT/DESTDIR. We mostly work around that by changing
-lsomething into -Wl,-lsomething, but that's only an uggly hack. 

> Before this, I tried buildroot (simple, works) and to a lesser extend
> scratchbox before.

I found buildroot very nice and clean when I searched for a build tool
in 2002, but it neither had a config frontend at that time nor did it
have the goal to be a completely integrated project management tool. All
other build tools had some disadvantages, I found OE much too
heavyweight and uCLinux-dist was always a you-have-to-download-80-MB-
before-you-can-start beast. 

Robert
-- 
 Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de
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