Hi Jonathan, On Fri, Aug 03, 2018 at 04:46:16AM +0100, Jonathan McDowell wrote: > I've been looking at generating binutils + gcc packages based on the > binutils-source + gcc-7-source packages for the xtensa-lx106 target > (ESP8266). I have something that seems to be working, and I'm > considering uploading them, but I don't think it's possible to build a > single toolchain that will target the ESP8266, ESP32 + ath9k Xtensa > variants. The xtensa-lx106 binary packages are turning out at about 20M > between them; is there enough use that it would be worth having all 3 > options present in Debian?
Let me argue that yes, that would be a good idea. We have esptool in the archive. The esptool comes with a flasher_stub (https://sources.debian.org/src/esptool/2.5.0+dfsg-1/flasher_stub/). Presently it cannot be built, because the toolchain would be required for doing so. It needs the xtensa-lx106-elf and xtensa-esp32-elf toolchains. The open-ath9k-htc-firmware package presently builds an xtensa toolchain from gcc-7 sources during build https://sources.debian.org/src/open-ath9k-htc-firmware/1.4.0-97-g75b3e59+dfsg-1/debian/cross-toolchain.mk/ using --target xtensa-elf. Having separate binary packages could simplify the packaging of open-ath9k-htc-firmware. Maybe the ath9k toolchain is less relevant as most users will be using open-ath9k-htc-firmware or firmware-atheros. Those that need can quite easily produce the toolchain from the open-ath9k-htc-firmware source package. But given the rising popcon of esptool (~200 now), toolchains for ESP8266 and ESP32 seem sensible to me. Note that any practical use will also need esp-idf. In particular, the flasher_stub from esptool needs esp-idf. Do you have any plans for packaging esp-idf? Also moving to gcc-8-source seems in order. Helmut