Re: Questions regarding armhf port for Raspberry Pi

[peter green <plugwash@p10link.net>]

> Using the packages above and creating a local mini-repository I'm now 
> able to use debootstrap, along with some coaxing, to create a minimal 
> Debian filesystem based on my rebuilt packages.  The first-stage 
> debootstrap (--foreign) is done under Debian armel and then with 
> chroot I then run the second-stage debootstrap.
Note that you don't actualy have to use --foreign in this case since 
your host kernel can run the binaries for the target.
>   As the Raspberry Pi hardware is not shipping yet, I'm using QEMU 
> configured with an emulated ARMv6+VFP CPU and running standard Debian 
> armel to perform the installation of the packages.
Makes sense.

I'd say the next step would be to try and setup an autobuilding system 
to build the rest of the packages. Now you have the root filesystem 
built i'd suggest using a "build-up" approach (that is ONLY giving the 
autobuilder access to the packages you have built). You may also want to 
try and find a way to automate the check for armv7 code and run it 
before introducing new packages into your archive.

You will also need to sort out a system to import new changes from 
debian where you have not made source changes and notify you that 
merging is required where you have made source changes (hopefully only a 
handful of packages).

I'd suggest working with wheezy rather than sid since the churn rate 
will be lower there and it's probablly what your users will want in the end.

> However, as mentioned above, debootstrap needs some coaxing.  During 
> the second-stage run of debootstrap, I'm getting dpkg errors that 
> abort the bootstrap process.  I can re-run debootstrap again and it 
> will complete, but I would really like to understand why second-stage 
> debootstrap can't complete the first time and fix the issues.  Also, 
> looking in the debootstrap.log file I see a number of dependency 
> warnings, but I'm not sure if these are just normal warnings which are 
> a side effect of how debootsrap calls dpkg to install packages on a 
> clean filesystem.
>
> The specific error I'm running into is the following:
>
> dpkg: regarding .../apt_0.8.15.10_armhf.deb containing apt, 
> pre-dependency problem:
>  apt pre-depends on libstdc++6 (>= 4.6)
>   libstdc++6 is unpacked, but has never been configured.
> dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/apt_0.8.15.10_armhf.deb 
> (--unpack):
>  pre-dependency problem - not installing apt
>
> For some reason, debootstrap (or perhaps it is actually dpkg) can't 
> properly figure out that the libstdc++6 package must be configured 
> before it attempts to install apt.  This is the only error of this 
> kind and I can't tell what might be different about how apt package 
> uses libstdc++ as a pre-depend.  Other packages don't fail in this manner.
>
> I've googled this error, but I haven't found specific information on 
> how to understand what's happening and fix the issue. I mostly find 
> bug reports that simply indicate the issue is not that uncommon.
>
> Any insight someone could provide into debootstrap/dpkg pre-dependency 
> issues would be very helpful.
You are more likely to find someone who knows about debugging 
debootstrap issues on debian-dpkg but I wouldn't worry too much about it 
for now,