linux cross-development (was: Re: /dev/null: No such file or directory)

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> (from Tue, 19 Sep 2006  
21:41:27 -0400):

> What happened to the linux_devtools port (which is supposed to take
> care of this) - was it never updated to parity with linux_base?

No. There are several reasons.

The current devtools port is a mess and interfered with the old  
linux_base port in undesirable ways (can't remember exactly how, I  
would have to have a look at it again). Bringing it into shape would  
be a lot of work (nobody stepped up so far, but I didn't asked for  
help for this because of the next reason).

To cross-develop you need a full system, the linux_base port is a lean  
and mean system. The current linux_base port is designed to extend the  
FreeBSD system and to provide a good user experience for those ports  
which are available in the ports collection (and most probably for a  
lot of other applications). We rely on the fallthrough to the native  
stuff in various places (e.g. we have symlinks to the corresponding  
FreeBSD configs where it applies). Doing a chroot into /compat/linux  
may work for some use cases, but not for all (and you need to do a  
chroot for cross-compiling, else you may pickup FreeBSD native stuff  
and get a lot of trouble) and it is not advised to to a chroot into it  
(I should add a note about this to the port...).

The linux_dist ports are full linux systems. You can chroot into them  
and you already have all you need (and you can use the gentoo  
package-stuff to add additional stuff).

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
Whatever carrousel you stand by, your baggage will
come in on another one.

http://www.Leidinger.net    Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
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