Murray.Jensen at csiro.au wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 10:05:45 +0200, Joerg Schilling writes:
> >A lot of software (all that uses autoconf) cannot be compiled on a different
> >CPU without manually editing all autoconf results which may take a long time.
>
> I cross-build OpenEmbedded (GNU+Linux) for our PowerPC boards on both
> Solaris 9/SPARC and Linux/x86 hosts.
>
> Cross-building with autoconf is not too bad these days - and OpenEmbedded
> makes it pretty simple to handle the odd cases where autoconf gets it wrong
> (and if a simple environment variable override doesn't work).
Are you sure?
Today, 80% of all autoconf tests return results based on a native run of a
compiled binary on the target system. If you only deoend on availability
tests for include files, things look much simpler.
> But also, I have noticed quite an improvement in the autoconf scripts
> recently - they appear to be trying to avoid those "run a program" type
> tests now.
???
> I don't think autoconf deserves the bad rap about cross-compiling anymore
> (besides, its just a tool really, the problem was always with the software
> authors which didn't write the autoconf scripts properly - they tended not
> to cross-compile so much until recently).
If you believe this, please explain why.
Don't lok at simple programs, look at cdrecord, star or similar.
> >As the Solaris ON tree is not using autoconf, this is different....
>
> Do you think this will make it easier or harder? I had a quick look at the
> OpenSolaris sources and it appears that there is support for cross compiling
> in the Makefiles (the NATIVE* variables). How good is that support?
> What about the ON tools - how well do they support cross-building?
If you create build system for a well known list of target platforms _only_
that all ose the same OS, it is better stay with a static non-autoconf
based system and this decision then will make things easier.
J?rg
--
EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) J?rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js at cs.tu-berlin.de (uni)
schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
