Re: compilers, toolchains, autobuild, headers, ... (was: Re: GTK 2)

Best I can say is that we're trying to get this mess cleaned up...

We don't have final words to say yet, but hope to have something over
the next month or so...

What we're trying to do is get a usable snapshot of Debian testing on
ARM running on a a set of iPAQ's we have with local 40 gig disks.
(Intimate, but Intimate against testing, rather than unstable).
We'll snapshot the package pool as well, so one can reliably install the
same bits more than once...

Once this is done, we'd like to update the toolchain to have a compiler
that generates better code for StrongARM, and rebuild packages we
put into Familiar. In some simple tests, this saved around 15%
of space.

In grand and glorious future, we'd like to rebuild from source
all our packages....

But one step at a time.

Nick will make an announcement when there is something to play with...
                        - Jim

> From: "Adam Lydick" <lydickaw@hotmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 15:42:58 -0400
> To: Jim.Gettys@compaq.com
> Subject: compilers, toolchains, autobuild, headers, ... (was: Re: GTK 2)
> -----
> I noticed a few things in your previous recent posts that reminded me of
> some questions that have been building up over the last few months :) Sorry
> to unload them all on you at once, but I had no idea who else to ask. If you
> don't have time for this: just delete it, I'll figure something out
> eventually.
>
> Most of these questions boil down to: I'm a pretty fair applications
> developer and I like to contribute in a way that is useful for everyone, but
> I don't really have a ton of time, so time spent fighting with compilers is
> time I can't spend writing applications :( Hopefully most of these issues
> are just ignorance on my part.
>
> (1) You mention a newer compiler? [gcc-3.x?] Is there a toolchain,
> preferably prebuilt that can use this?

George France has been playing with toolchains...

>
> (2) autobuild. Has there been any progress on this? Should I do anything
> special to get my applications ready to be autobuilt? I hit the autobuild
> mailing list archives, but didn't see anything concrete (I'm guessing
> because there *isn't* anything concrete, but I had to ask)

Not ready for primetime. Presume something like Debian packaging and
build technology.

>
> (3) Various cross compile related issues: Many people (including myself) are
> using headers yanked from desktop versions of their libs. This is
> potentially bad. Also, I've tried cross compiling, ran into some strange
> errors that I was unable to diagnose, asked for help (and got some), ran
> into more errors, got sick of fixing my install problems and just used the
> skiffcluster to build on. [a million times easier].

Yup. We want to rebuild a compatible cross toolchain for a new build
environment. But we have to have a new native environment to be compatible
to. See above.

>
> This all ties together into: Is there a sane way to build arm packages on a
> desktop machine without spending forever figuring out the details of various
> toolchains? Perferably one that also allows installing a subset of arm
> libraries (and their correct headers)? Is a -dev package available for
> ipkg'ed libs?
>

Life is still pretty insane. Hopefully we'll get less crazy with time...
                        - Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com