Re: [Niels Möller] Big-endian testing

[nisse@lysator.liu.se (Niels Möller)]

Background: I'd like to cross compile GNU Nettle for various
architectures, and run tests using qemu-user. All on my main development
system which is x86_64 with debian stretch.

My current need is tests on big-endian architectures, e.g., mips. I've
got some advice from Helmut Grohne, who suggested that I direct any
further questions or comments to this list.

Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> writes:

> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 10:52:25AM +0100, Niels Möller wrote:
>> Now I had another look at https://wiki.debian.org/CrossToolchains, and
>> it looks like in unstable, it should work to just enable the foreign
>
> s/unstable/stretch/
>
>> architecture of interest, e.g., dpkg --add-architecture mips (I'm
>> assumimg that's is big-endian, unlike mipsel), followed by
>> 
>>   apt-get update && apt-get install crossbuild-essential-mips gcc-mips-linux-gnu 
>
> Correct. Due to a disagreement bewteen britney, gcc, and dpkg
> maintainers you also need to install libc-dev:mips and
> libstdc++-dev:mips if you want to build packages.

Ok. Compiler and lib*-dev:mips packages installed fine (I needed to
specify version for c++ library). It seems crossbuild-essential-mips
wasn't available in the repo, though, but that's probably not
"essential" for me.

>> Do you know if these packages have reached testing? I'm comfortable with
>> running a mix of stable and testing packages, while I'd prefer to not
>> install packages from unstable.
>
> This reached stable. No need to bother with mixing testing.

Great! It would be nice if the wiki page featured instructions for
current stable at the top.

>> I'm not familiar with building debian packages. My interest is
>> cross-compiling nettle and maybe gmp from upstream sources. Both use GNU
>> autoconf, so cross configuration is pretty easy.
>
> I routinely cross build both to about 30 Debian architectures (as part
> of the rebootstrap effort). Yes, it just works.

I have now successfully configured and built nettle with 

  ./configure --host=mips-linux-gnu --enable-mini-gmp CXX=/bin/false

and after also installing the qemu-user package, make check worked out
of the box, running the mips testsuite binaries.

Thanks for the great work! Much improvement since the previous time I
attempted to do this (I didn't try *that* hard at the time, but I gave
up after a few hours, searching for instructions and struggling with
cross-gcc-dev).

Regards,
/Niels

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