Re: [MiNT] Adding MiNT support to pkgsrc?

[David Brownlee <abs@absd.org>]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009, Mark Duckworth wrote:

> It's interesting but wasn't gentoo built because of deficiencies in pkgsrc?

	I wasn't aware of that - I though they were pretty much
	independent?

> Is pkgsrc well suited to cross compiling?  That's really what we need and on 
> my radar we have scratchbox and openembedded.

	Generic cross compiling is an interesting challenge - well
	written apps using autoconf etc *should* just work, but
	many apps want to run a binary built during the build
	process, and do not distinguish host vs target (which I'm
	sure is no news to you :)

	Cross compiling a single app or project is simple enough
	(eg: make NetBSD/atari distribution from source on a posix
	system via './build.sh -m atari release')

	In case its of any interest there are three approaches for
	people building pkgsrc packages for slower architectures:

	a) setup a fast box with a cross compiling gcc and exported
	   filesystem to target box, and set the compiler on the target
	   box to distcc. Build on target box. Works for ~100% of packages,
	   compiles and links are much speeded up, but configures and
	   suchlike still take ~forever

	b) Ensure the packages *really* support cross compiling and then
	   build on a fast box. Every package has to be individually
	   tested and potentially adjusted, but nice and fast when it
	   works. Joerg has done this for the xorg distribution packages
	   in pkgsrc.

	c) Use an emulator on a fast machine. Can be combined with a) :)

	pkgsrc is reasonably well suited for cross compiling - after
	extracting a package and applying any pkgsrc patches it will
	create a '.tools/bin' directory in the build area and populates
	it with symlinks or sh wrapper for the needed build tools, to
	ensure the build picks up the right copy of eg: perl rather
	than some random one lying around in the path.

	It also does similar tricks with include and lib files, setting
	-I and -L appropriately so packages only finds the libs and
	includes you want it to, so a package doesn't configure and
	link against some extra lib which happens to be installed and
	isn't recorded in the dependencies so the binary package fails
	on a different box at runtime.

	But I digress...