Re: some thoughts (scratchbox, emdebian/rules)
ext Philippe De Swert wrote:
Hi all,
Recently there was a discussion about using scratchbox to do the building for
the mini-debian part of the emdebian project. (See
http://lists.debian.org/debian-embedded/2004/debian-embedded-200401/msg00052.html
for reference). Since I have now had the time to look into it I have a few
remarks:
2. Unfortunately it seems quite complex to set up (however with decent packages it
should be less of a problem)
We're working on packaging scratchbox as a debian package. I don't know
when exactly this would be available, we have a "dumb" package which
doesn't really know how to upgrade itself currently. It isn't much
better than using the tar-balls from the website.
3. The major drawback is the need for a working (target)-board. This is not very
very useful when doing development for a new platform, and some boards do not
have the resources to run the whole environment
You don't necessarily need a working target board if your build systems
don't try to execute cross-compiled binaries. It is only needed for
"broken" packages.
I would try to make
as much workarounds as possible in the rules file (makefile for debian source
package) as these work-around would remain valid for quite a while, and makes
rebuilding by developer easier.
In my opinion you are a brave soul to attempt going at it that way. :)
The problems are mostly not related to Debian rules files alone. You'll
need to fix the original build systems themselves.
Luckily for us mere mortals this is just fine from scratchbox project's
perspective since we're really only interested in the result (==
cross-compiling Debian for embedded devices). If more package
maintainers and upstream projects are aware of cross-compiling, then it
will make life easier for all.
BTW. I believe we're now able to cross-build approx. 80 packages out of 90.
This is af course also a little warm-up for the discussions at Fosdem
(www.fosdem.org). Everybody interested is free to join in. We have a more or
less "official and informal" meeting at lunch on sunday which I would use to
meet with everybody interested and make some practical arrangements for the real
discussion on sunday evening.
I'm not sure if I'm able to attend Fosdem. I'll try to find out if I
could get it arranged as it would definitely be useful.
/lauri
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