Re: cross-build-essential
+++ Paul Wise [2012-01-21 20:37 +0800]:
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Wookey wrote:
>
> > Currently on Debian you'll need to have made the emdebian repositories
> > available because otherwise you won't find any cross-compilers, but
> > hopefully we'll have them in the main archive in the not-too distant.
>
> Whats the status/blockers for getting these into Debian main?
To do this properly requires cross-dependencies to be enabled/allowed
in the buildd and archive infrastructure. arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc
build-depends on libc-dev:armel
Currently the buildd's don't know how to do this, and we don't allow
either build-depenencies or package dependecnies outside the
architecture.
After discussions at last year's debconf everyone is basically happy
that this stuff should be allowed where a good case is made (and this
is a good case), but various bits of infrastructure and scripts need
to be tweaked so they still work.
Currently debian cross-tools are built by the emdebian team (well,
Hector Oron in practice) using the buidlcross script (in experimental
these days) which uses dpkg-cross to generate the cross-libraries and
do the builds.
Ubuntu uses a different scheme, with a package that depends on the
various linux-source, binutils-source, gcc-source, eglibc-source
packages to do a 3-stage bootstrap and thus generate cross-packages.
This avoids cross-arch dependencies so it can be built in existing
infrastructure. Unfortunately the maintainer has never quite managed
to get his jobs list short enough to upload this to Debian, and it's
always going to be an interim solution anyway.
Last feb when we mooted uploading this for the time being it made
sense. Having got to this point I'd prefer to fix the cross-arch
dependency issues and upload some cleaner cross-compiler packages.
However right now no-one is really working on this much. Hector is
busy with armhf stuff (and a new job). I'm working on sbuild/buildd
multiarch cross-building.
If anyone wants to take the glory by actually making this work (it
probably isn't very hard at this stage) you are very welcome. The
debian-embedded list is the place where this stuff gets discussed.
> I would dearly like to be able to compile ARM stuff elsewhere than on
> my phone since it is a bit slow ;)
Would be nice wouldn't it? You should be able to use the emdebian
cross-tools fairly painlessly, but they do regularly get out-of-sync
with the main archive due to 'busy maintainers' syndrome which then
causes breakage.
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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