Re: Emdebian native build on PPC?
+++ Sergei Poselenov [2010-09-06 16:20 +0400]:
> Hello all,
>
> I have a question regarding the use of the emdebian-tools in the native
> build environment.
>
> I'm a novice to the Debian world (always used the RPM-based distros),
> so please excuse my ignorance of the Debian package and tools
> fundamentals.
>
> We are going to build our own PowerPC distribution (targeting a
> embedded system) based on the Emdebian package customization
> (DEB_VENDOR, etc). However, as fas I understood the Emdebian concept,
> it is a cross-build system, running on top of the standard Debian
> distribution, installed on a host.
Emdebian has more than one concept - just to check we are on the same
wavelength, you are talking about emdebian crush, where packages are
rebuilt after modification (as opposed to emdebian grip where they are
repacked, but not rebuilt)?
> From my past experience with the cross-toolchains and cross-builds, I
> remember how painful could be a build process (used Den Kegel
> crosstool scripts to build a toolchain; libtool-based packages was the
> real problem to build in cross).
Oh yes - we all love libtool. And it is intended to be helpful!
> Can I use the benefits of the native PowerPC build system
> (emdebian-tools, right?) to rebuild the Emdebian distribution (the
> target part of it) with my changes in package list, packages
> configurations, install scripts, etc?
In principle the 'modifications and patches' aspect of emdebian is
entirely separate from the cross-building aspect. However, the way we
have been doing things to date we have been doing either both or
neither, so doing modifed native-builds you may find some issues.
However I believe it should work, as cross-building patches are always
desiigned not to break native-building. More serious is that crush has
not been maintained for a year or so, so everything will have bitrot.
Crush is of course 3 things: busybox core, cross-building and reduced
packages. If you only want one of those three things then that is a
much simpler target. You may need to miss out some of the 'make it
work with busybox' patches.
> My plan is to run the emdebian-tools on a PowerPC system (a fast
> powerpc board with NFS-mounted Debian rootfs) to produce a PowerPC
> target distribution packages. In this way I hope I'll be able to
> simplify the build of the target components.
>
> Any suggestions/comments are welcome.
What you want to do should work. You will find that many of the
existing emdebian patches are out of date (the ones that never made it
into Debian proper for various reasons). But the mechanisms in the
tools should work fine. Do please report back on issues that you have.
Neil will no doubt be able to give more detail about potential gotchas.
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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