New IXP4XX-based Machine

["Mark Gollahon" <golly@stellarwerx.com>]

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Hello!

As I have stated before, I am a bit new, so please bear with me.

I am trying to bring up OE on a new IXP4XX-based machine and having a little trouble with the "proper" way to do it.  For example, I created a whole new machine config, inserting what I think should be machine-specific settings, and importing the (now somewhat-defunct) ixp4xx.conf configuration (and later the ixp4xxbe.conf configuration).  My bootstrap-image gets everything compiled, but when it goes to build the rootfs, ipkg fails looking for task-base.

My question is not so much about getting ipkg to work (I have found several ways), but more about the "proper" way so that I don't go "spinning into the grass" in the future.  I noticed that during the rootfs build that the "ixp4xxbe" "arch" was not in the ipkg config file, so all of my "*_ixp4xxbe.ipk" files were completely ignored - stuff like "task-base"!  I ultimately had to append "armv5te" and "ixp4xxbe" to PACKAGE_EXTRA_ARCHS and that worked, but I worked on this on-and-off for over a week to figure it out.  I really don't want to do that again when/if I try to bring up another machine.

My question is - should I even be attempting to define a new machine and including ixp4xxbe.conf in it?  Should I define my own machine by copying the contents of ixp4xxbe.conf?  Should I have specified the "ixp4xxbe" machine file in my local.conf along with the extra (what I think should be) machine config?  Or should I define my own distro and put that machine config there?  What is the most appropriate way to do this?

Thank you!
-Mark Gollahon