aligning my embedded Linux efforts with emdebian
I've had some off-line emails with Wookey about aligning my embedded
Linux efforts with emdebian. I have ARM720 based hardware with a Linux
distribution and cross tools - more info at www.linuxio.org. The
readme.html there serves as a data sheet and user's manual. Most of my
customers are new to Linux, coming from the windows world, and that
readme also serves as a quick-start to get that customer to the point
where he can cross-compile, download and run a hello app. So far it's
been successful.
The advantage of aligning my embedded ARM Linux efforts with emdebian
is: [1] more testers for emdebian, [2] additional contributions to
emdebian, [3] I and my customers would benefit from support and features
I can't provide on my own and [4] theoretically improve efficiency by
reducing duplicate efforts. My Linux distribution uses a master makefile
to coordinate operations such as installation, configuring and building
a kernel (ver 2.4.18 with rmk5), building a file system, building
BusyBox (ver 0.60.5), storing the kernel and/or file system to flash
etc. We've built our own 2.95.3 tools and glibc and uclibc - we built or
own because [1] it's nice to be self-sufficient, [2] tools at
http://emdebian.sourceforge.net/crossdev.html need an FPU - the ARM720
doesn't have one, [3] we mistakenly thought that it was safer to build
everything so that the kernel and libraries and applications 'matched'
and [4] 2.95.3 might be better than 2.95.2 because it's newer (by that
reasoning, we should be using 3.x, which of course has problems building
the kernel).
Here are some possible directions I could take:
[] find/modify or contribute a script to download and build gcc,
binutils, glibc, uclibc. Our script does ARM but could be modified for
other architectures.
[] Use debs for various applications. Offer a more full-featured
alternative to BusyBox. Figure out how to use debs on an rpm based PCs.
[] Port my board-specific patches to the most recent Debian ARM kernel
[] Incorporate emdebsys into my master makefile or vice versa.
Any comments, suggestions or direction?
--Jim Fred
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