I just got a call from the Monta-Vista folks (makers of Hard-Hat).
I wanted to get their reaction to our possible use of the HardHat platform
as a cross-compile environment, and what sort of comittment they have to
keeping a free version available.
They were encouraged by our potential use of their "Journeyman"
functionality, and claimed to be comitted to keeping this level of
functionality available for free (which makes sense, as the compile
environment is entirely based on open-source tools to begin with).
The big benifit to using a pre-packaged environment like this will be the
ease with which a cross-compile environment can be created, and the fact
that someone with a direct interest (as well as time and money) will be
maintaining and upgrading the tools in this environment. I'd be real
interested in the RedHat embedded tools as well, if they provided some sort
of free version.
I have the Journeyman CD's, but have yet to install and evaluate the
development environment. I'll try to get to this in the next week or so,
and report back.
For those unfamilar with the benifits of using an embedded development
environment, we *should* be able to gain the following advantages over
simply compiling native on a generic x86 linux box:
1) Independence from the host systems glibc version, making it easier to
compile/contribute
2) The ability to compile to an alternative CPU architecture. While I doubt
anyone is going to do this immediately, a large number of commercial
products are based on LRP, and we could get a lot of mileage, (support,
hardware, money, ???) out of just one or two successful internet appliance
designs based on or derrived from LEAF, so the ability to target typical
embedded CPU's (ARM, PPC, 68K, MIPS, others) might be handy.
3) The ability to compile against arbitrary C libraries. I can see a system
with the core BusyBox and firewall utilities compiled against a small glibc
replacement, with the full glibc available if you've got the room and the
need to run it for some high-end application.
4) We get an easy way to answer the "how do I compile for LEAF" mailing list
questions. This is only partly in jest...if we don't have a standard
environment that can weather changes to glibc and other compile environment
options, in a year or two we'll be right back where we are now, with no-one
wanting to install an ancient Debian Slink (or is that RH7) install just to
compile LEAF binaries ;-)
Look for the "product review" soon...
Charles Steinkuehler
http://lrp.steinkuehler.net
http://c0wz.steinkuehler.net (lrp.c0wz.com mirror)
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