Re: Getting started guide
On Friday 29 February 2008, Neil Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:32:55 +0000
>
> David Goodenough <david.goodenough@btconnect.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a bunch of boards running versions of Debian that I stripped of
> > all the obvious unneeded files (like documentation). They are i386
> > boards
>
> You don't need most of the Emdebian support for i386 - you just need
> widespread support for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="nodocs". I would suggest that
> you seek to find such support by filing bugs asking for support for
> nodocs against relevant Debian packages as that will help you and help
> Emdebian.
I may not need Emdebian support, but I thought it might be the easiest way
to get started. But if it would be better I can try building for the
RB532, which is an IDT Mips based board.
>
> > a target CF size of about 64MB will do me fine - my old system achieved
> > 80MB and I made little effort to remove unneeded base packages.
>
> The main change you need to get Debian down to that level is to remove
> perl, remove coreutils and implement busybox. The patches already in
> emsource will help you along that road.
That is the kind of thing that I was hoping for.
>
> > Well I came across emdebian, and I thought that is much more what I want,
> > and much closer to what I need and also closer to what I know.
> >
> > So looked for documentations, and found some bits and pieces in the Wiki,
> > but what I need to get started (and could not find) was a simple howto
> > which takes me from installing the tools, selecting the packages that I
> > want beyond the basic set, downloading them and building them, and then
> > building the target "disk" image installing all the packages that I have
> > build. Does such a HowTo exist anywhere?
>
> In short, no. The principle reason is that you want *native* rebuilds
> not cross builds and Emdebian concentrates on cross builds.
>
> Installing the tools is a case of build-essential. No tools are needed
> for native rebuilds.
>
> Selecting the packages is entirely down to your chosen configuration,
> the only practical consideration for your needs is to remove the
> "Essential: yes" tag from debian/control wherever it appears during
> each rebuild.
>
> Only you know what packages you will need beyond the basic set.
>
> Building the packages, after your modifications, is simply a case of
> using 'dpkg-buildpackage' or 'debuild'. Don't complicate things by
> trying to use cross-building tools.
>
> Creating the filesystem image is a simple case of using debootstrap.
>
> None of this is particularly related to cross building so feel free to
> start a new section of the Wiki, tag it as CategoryEmdebian and
> describe how you get on.
>
> Emdebian is a very small group and nobody is currently looking at
> native builds, there simply isn't time. I concentrate on ARM with a
> particular emphasis on balloon3 and iPAQ. Others concentrate on Nokia
> and MIPS targets.
>
> There are various improvements needed across Debian that are required
> for such deployments and which will also benefit native builds but
> nobody is actively developing those because nobody currently has the
> time or inclination to do so.
>
> i.e. If you want this, Emdebian can and will support you but you will
> have to do the majority of the work yourself and that includes working
> out how to get things started. Naturally, we would appreciate it if
> those efforts are then documented so that others are able to learn from
> your experience.
>
> > If not I will try to write it as I go along, and contribute it back.
>
> Please do.
>
> > To that
> > end when I try to use emsource I get all kind of messages about not
> > finding the source files
>
> I need to know the precise messages. emsource, like the rest of
> emdebian-tools is reasonably verbose and you can always get a lot more
> information by adding more --verbose options. Wherever possible, I have
> tried to allow all emdebian-tools scripts to explain exactly what is
> going on.
The message say that is can not open the file sue to code 13 permission
problems. This happens when it is trying to fetch the file from the
mirror. The odd thing is that apt-get source works just fine.
>
> > The error messages say that it can not find the dsc, tar and diff files
> > for nano on that mirror. But looking at the mirror directly through a
> > browser the relevant files are there (and with the right version).
>
> Those would be errors from apt, not from emsource. emsource does not
> interface with the mirror directly, it only calls apt-get source.
which makes the fact the apt-get source works rather odd.
David
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