[ELDK] x64 host for eldk, AMCC Kilauea questions

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear "Jim Idle",

In message <000501cac074$015e0a40$041a1ec0$@com> you wrote:
>
> I have taken the latest eldk from git and setting up a build on my 64 bit
> Madriva system. However the ELDK_BUILD script gives:
> 
> Host architecture x86_64 is not supported by ELDK

This is to be expected. Cross building is not a trivial thing to do,
and changing the host's architecture like that will have an impact.

> However, I suspect that this just needs adding to list? Perhaps there is
> more to do than this thooug. 

It's not as easy as this.

> The script stops and says it cannot find /opt/eld/SRPMS (btw I had
> ELD_PREFIX set and it still said that same directory was missing, but I also
> tried without ELD_PREFIX set). So, I am presuming that I will need to
> manually get the SRMPS set. Are the ones on the ftp site up to date? Is
> there a git source for those?

It should not stop there yet. If it does, you did something wrong.

Please see this application note for detailed instructions how to set
up a working build enviroment:
http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/AN2009_02_EldkReleaseBuildEnvironment 

Note that instead of running in a virtual machine it is usually
sufficient to "chroot" into the build system's root file system. You
probably have to mount /proc there. 

Note also that the only environments where the current set up is known
to build are RedHat 7.3 and Fedora Core 5.  Newer distributions are
known to cause problems that are non-trivial to fix.

In your case, when running the build on a x86_64 host, you must make
sure that the build environment "looks" as if it was a 32 bit system,
i. e. try something like

	$ sudo linux32 /usr/sbin/chroot /work/eldk_build_root /bin/bash --login
	$ su - builder
	-> cd /opt/eldk/build
	-> ./ELDK_BUILD

> On the up to date front, I presume that after building ELDK, I can then
> replace the 2.6 kernel there with the latest from your git hub and there is
> nothing else to do but that? 

You don't  have to rebuild  the ELDK just to do that. You can always
use the ELDK with current sources for the Linux kernel or U-Boot or
the like.


> What about all the rpm packages? Are they up to date? I don't mind at all

What do you mean by "up to date" ? ELDK 4.2 is roughly based on Fedora
7, which means it's 5 releases behind. But there are a lot of
inter- dependencies, so it is not trivial to update the code. It may
work for simple packages, but you will quickly run into situations
where updating package A requires a more recent version of package B,
which depends on a newer version of package C, which requires a recent
libtool, which cannot even be unpacked because recent libtool packages
are compressed with xz, so you have to install xz on your target
first - oh, and don't forget to install a recent version of tar as
well that knows how to unpack lzma compressed tarballs. [The fact that
the xz package cannot be unpacked because it is compressed itself with
xz, so you cannot bootstrap this from the RPM just adds some zest to
the matter.] Now, when this is done you might find out that the host
compiler in your build environment is too old to compile the new
packages. And switching to a more recent distribution as host
environment will quickly show that the new tools barf on even the most
fundamental packages, so you need to upgrade these, too.

In the end you will have to update _everything_. Which is an awful lot
of effort.


> putting the effort to get my kit in to shape (you guys are giving me the
> head start for free after all), but it isn't clear from the docs I can find
> just how up to date things are (looks like your kernel is tracking the
> latest one though). 

As mentioned before, the kernel and U-Boot are pretty much completely
independent from the toolchain and native runtime environment parts.
You can use the ELDK with ANY Linux kernel tree.

> Finally then, this is targeting a AMCC Kilauea board. Looking through the
> archives that I can find, it looks like this might not be quite as up to
> date as it might be? For instance the USB driver seems to be a bit wonky
> (though it will work somewhat with the latest kernel I understand?). Are we
> flogging a dead horse with the Kilauea board?

No, you aren't. Just use ELDK 4.2 (as is, no need for any rebuild) and
combine it with a recent Linux kernel source tree.


> Thanks for any pointers, I am trying everything as I speak but it would save
> me time if there are shortcuts here of course.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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