Re: [MiNT] Sparemint Coldfire (cross-building)

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On Friday 08 January 2010, Paul Wratt wrote:
> Thanks for this Eero, I the process may only (seem to) be complicated
> until you get a successfully compile and package.
>
> I have a script (bash/shell) that does somethings similar, it is
> possible that the only real thing missing is some documentation and a
> download of working mint and cross tools.. (for SB)

Scratchbox is useful mainly in cases where:

1. One needs to do "frequent" binary incompatible distro re-compiles, or
    bootstrap distro for a new platform.  On platforms with shared libs,
    binary incompatible changes make everything stop working, so
    ability to do cross-build bootstrapping is great.

2. Target platform is slow, compiled packages don't support cross-compiling
    and build speeds matter so that one really wants to do cross-builds.

MiNT doesn't use shared libs, so 1) is less of a problem.  Coldfire distro
still needs bootstrapping, but I'm not sure how much SB would help with
that (you save work with it, but adding sparemint support takes work too).

For 2), SB is the solution, especially if one wants mostly to use pristine
upstream sources and also other things than the toolchain are a bottleneck.
In MiNT case the sources might need changes anyway because MiNT is lacking
some features that Linux etc have though.  If only toolchain is
a bottleneck, then I think distcc + cross-compiler is easiest solution.


> I will hopefully get around to testing this soon and some of the other
> bits and pieces, especially if they can provide alternate and
> supplemental build environments, this wilokl help others, and any
> speed improvements will be moire of an incentive to others to do some
> things, even small pieces..


	- Eero