[ELDK] ELDK with x86 target

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear Phil,

in message <1211474543.14860.101.camel at pterry-fc6.micromemory.com> you wrote:
> 
> I'm  with you on that one... not to rip on denx (limited resources etc.
> I understand)... but I tried building ELDK from source/modifying
> packages in order to use a modified ELDK as our delivery vehicle to our
> customers and my experience is that ELDK is intimately tied to the the
> host system. I was trying to build on a fedora-6 box and my mandriva
> laptop... too many of the packages, while cross-compiled are hacked to
> do so, so in fact many of the autoconf configuration tests etc are
> probing the host system not your putative target. (The configurations in
> the spec files are driving a normal host build using say gcc and relying
> on the fact that your path will find the powerpc-linux-gcc cross
> compiler but the rest of the configuration testing is just probing your
> host... very hacky)

You are right. This is a problem we inherited  from  the  very  first
versions, and it's caused by the decision to bae the ELDK on RedHat /
YDL / Fedora Core / Fedora Source RPMs. Until today, it's a nightmare
to  try and build the Fedora distribution from scratch, i. e. without
already having an at  lease  somewhat  recent  (mximum  two  versions
older)  Fedora  build  environment.  There are lots of circular build
dependencies etc. in the source RPMs that make bootstrapping really a
pain.

We found, that to get a new package to build, the approach  we  chose
(i.  e. build in a somewhat faked cross environment) requires in most
cases significantly less effort than to make the same  backage  build
in a real cross or even native build environment.

So even today, where  it  seems  reasonable  to  use  a  (virtual  or
emulated) native build environment, building from scratch is really a
PITA unless you use a pretty complete Fedora build envrionment.

> Hence your host system has to be fedora8 based so that the fedora8 based
> target works...

Well, let's say it has to be Fedora/Redhat based.  Remember  that  we
run  the production builds of ELDK on a redHat 7.3 system (we do that
for maximum compatibility with older Linux host environments).

> I don't have the effort to fix the whole of ELDK so I'm looking at the
> effort of just fixing what I need initially and then fixing up more as
> customers demand. I'd be happy to feed my "fixes" back up for possible
> inclusion but I don't see a quick fix happening anytime soon.

We appreciate any feedback and contributions.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
DENX Software Engineering GmbH,     MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd at denx.de
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