Re: building custom embedded distributions
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 03:07:46PM +0200, David N. Welton wrote:
> David Weinehall wrote:
>
> >>It would be a neat trick, but I'm finding that the hard part for me in
> >>using debs is keeping my own source code changes integrated. Also,
> >>there is a lot of overhead building stuff that I just don't care about.
>
> >I build debs of my own source code too, to be able to keep track of
> >dependencies in a sane manner.
>
> How do you keep track of the patches you make for them, so that you can
> keep your deb up to date with the real deb?
orig-tree
orig-tree+my_patches
diff -urpN orig-tree orig-tree+my_patches
Works pretty well for me. But usually when working on an embedded
system, you have to use a relatively stable base anyway, so tracking
unstable might not be a good idea.
> >>In other words, it seems like a good way of making "a smaller Debian",
> >>but not quite for smaller, more heavily modified embedded systems.
>
> >Well, this is after all debian-embedded...
>
> I like Debian a lot, but I like it because it's the right tool for the
> job. I think some bits of it are unsuited to systems that may require
> local modification - putting the entire patch in one file, for instance.
> That doesn't even work for big debs (gcc, glibc), which have their
> own hacky system of dealing with a series of smaller patches. Also,
> consider build time, if you want to be able to recreate everything from
> sources, all the time spent on packages such as gcc-docs is wasted.
Yes, some packages have hacks for patch handling. This is getting
remedied in more and more packages by things such as cdbs though.
> I'm even getting skeptical about building from Debian sources given how
> some of them behave - glibc doesn't actually give you the real sources
> it's using until you issue a command in ./debian/rules. Automating that
> sort of thing is no fun.
There is a reason; to avoid simple mistakes like changing a file without
noticing it, and getting that change into the distributed package.
Regards: David Weinehall
--
/) David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /) Northern lights wander (\
// Maintainer of the v2.0 kernel // Dance across the winter sky //
\) http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ (/ Full colour fire (/
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