Re: Autobuilding with cross-compiler to solve m68k woes?

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 02:36:20PM -0500, Sam Hartman wrote:
> >>>>> "Steve" == Steve Langasek <vorlon@netexpress.net> writes:
> 
>     Steve> What if we had the means of reliably determining which
>     Steve> packages could be cross-compiled, and which needed to be
>     Steve> compiled on a native system?  Would that make
>     Steve> cross-compiling a viable option?
> 
> Please go successfully cross compile multiple Debian packages you do
> not maintain.  You probably don't want to upload the results but if
> you successfully generate debs from a Debian source package by cross
> compiling, it will be an educational experience.
> 
> 
> Those of us who have played with cross compilers tend to believe that
> the engineering problems will dominate and that it is not a viable
> solution.

Those of us who work with cross compilers tend not to have a choice :)

This can be surmounted.  We build an entire distribution via cross
compilation, amounting to about 120 packages for dozens of targets at
once.  Hopefully, once life settles down a little, most of our patches
will see the light of day (or rather, more of the light of day -
they're always there in the source packages, but we haven't been making
as much effort to send them upstream as we'd like to).

I admit that it's a serious technical challenge to do it, though. 
Little bugs keep cropping up.  I certainly wouldn't want to try all of
Debian that way.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz                           Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Monta Vista Software                              Debian Security Team
                         "I am croutons!"