Build process

Build process

[Philip Taylor]

   I've been playing a little with Xen on Gentoo (just out of interest, 
rather than for any productive reason), and considered making an ebuild 
to allow a simple "emerge xen-utilities xen-sources" method of compiling 
the tools and kernel (probably equivalent to "emerge usermode-utilities 
usermode-sources" for UML). (It would be easier if I knew what I was 
doing, and I haven't actually got much working yet, but it should be 
theoretically possible.)

   One small (but annoying) problem was that I couldn't change the 
compiler. Some of the Makefiles set 'CC=gcc' and 'HOSTCC=gcc', which 
referred to GCC 3.4 (which doesn't work -- I think it died while 
compiling the kernel), and I wanted to explicitly use the GCC 3.3 
binary. The GCC problem was relatively easily fixed by swapping my 
system's default gcc; but I also fancied using ccache, which usually 
works by just changing CC, and couldn't find any way to do that without 
altering the makefiles (and I'd prefer to build from a clean copy of the 
source).
   Would it be possible/safe to use something like 'CC ?= gcc' and 
'HOSTCC ?= $(CC)' (I hope that does what I expect) in all the relevant 
makefiles, so the compiler can be easily overriden? Or is there some 
other solution that I've missed?

Thanks,
-- 
Philip Taylor
philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk


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Re: Build process

[Keir Fraser]

Even if we fixed our Makefiles (and I'm not sure we can -- if we use
'?=' then we don't get 'gcc' by default because it appears CC is set
to 'cc' already) your beef is with the Linux build system. In the
Linux build system there is no way to change the compiler name to
anything other than $(CROSS_COMPILE)gcc [you can set CROSS_COMPILE
though].

Have you tried tricks like creating a symlink in a local directory to
your preferred compiler and adding it to your PATH? e.g.,
 # ln -sf `which ccache' gcc
 # PATH=`pwd`:$PATH make

 -- Keir

>    I've been playing a little with Xen on Gentoo (just out of interest, 
> rather than for any productive reason), and considered making an ebuild 
> to allow a simple "emerge xen-utilities xen-sources" method of compiling 
> the tools and kernel (probably equivalent to "emerge usermode-utilities 
> usermode-sources" for UML). (It would be easier if I knew what I was 
> doing, and I haven't actually got much working yet, but it should be 
> theoretically possible.)
> 
>    One small (but annoying) problem was that I couldn't change the 
> compiler. Some of the Makefiles set 'CC=gcc' and 'HOSTCC=gcc', which 
> referred to GCC 3.4 (which doesn't work -- I think it died while 
> compiling the kernel), and I wanted to explicitly use the GCC 3.3 
> binary. The GCC problem was relatively easily fixed by swapping my 
> system's default gcc; but I also fancied using ccache, which usually 
> works by just changing CC, and couldn't find any way to do that without 
> altering the makefiles (and I'd prefer to build from a clean copy of the 
> source).
>    Would it be possible/safe to use something like 'CC ?= gcc' and 
> 'HOSTCC ?= $(CC)' (I hope that does what I expect) in all the relevant 
> makefiles, so the compiler can be easily overriden? Or is there some 
> other solution that I've missed?
> 
> Thanks,
> -- 
> Philip Taylor
> philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk
> 
> 
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Re: Build process

[Philip Taylor]

Keir Fraser wrote on 08/11/2004 08:05:

...
>    Would it be possible/safe to use something like 'CC ?= gcc' and 
>> 'HOSTCC ?= $(CC)' (I hope that does what I expect) in all the relevant 
>> makefiles, so the compiler can be easily overriden? Or is there some 
>> other solution that I've missed?
...
> Have you tried tricks like creating a symlink in a local directory to
> your preferred compiler and adding it to your PATH? e.g.,
>  # ln -sf `which ccache' gcc
>  # PATH=`pwd`:$PATH make

Ah, that worked (after I apparently fork-bombed my machine and also 
corrupted python). But it turns out that Gentoo's Portage automatically 
makes ccache handle calls to 'gcc' anyway, and the problems with GCC 3.4 
were straightforward to fix (see patch at 
http://zaynar.demon.co.uk/misc2/blkfront.patch - it needs inline 
functions to be defined before they're first called).

I believe my attempt at a kernel ebuild is generally working (using the 
2.0 source release plus the above patch for GCC 3.4), though currently 
only for 2.6.9-xen0 and with a little too much manual intervention. It 
also compiles the rest of Xen + tools + docs without any problems, but 
doesn't quite know how to install them. Anyway, I should end up with 
something useful soon, so I'd be interested to know if anybody with 
Gentoo would be interested in testing/using it.


>  -- Keir
> 

-- 
Philip Taylor
philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk


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Re: Build process

[Jerome Brown]

I'm running Gentoo and would be very happy to test etc - I have been 
thinking about writing an ebuild myself, but haven't got around to it.

If your interested, post on the Gentoo-Server mailing list and ask there 
  there are a few interested parties from memory.

Jerome

Philip Taylor wrote:
> Keir Fraser wrote on 08/11/2004 08:05:
> 
> ...
> 
>>    Would it be possible/safe to use something like 'CC ?= gcc' and
>>
>>> 'HOSTCC ?= $(CC)' (I hope that does what I expect) in all the 
>>> relevant makefiles, so the compiler can be easily overriden? Or is 
>>> there some other solution that I've missed?
> 
> ...
> 
>> Have you tried tricks like creating a symlink in a local directory to
>> your preferred compiler and adding it to your PATH? e.g.,
>>  # ln -sf `which ccache' gcc
>>  # PATH=`pwd`:$PATH make
> 
> 
> Ah, that worked (after I apparently fork-bombed my machine and also 
> corrupted python). But it turns out that Gentoo's Portage automatically 
> makes ccache handle calls to 'gcc' anyway, and the problems with GCC 3.4 
> were straightforward to fix (see patch at 
> http://zaynar.demon.co.uk/misc2/blkfront.patch - it needs inline 
> functions to be defined before they're first called).
> 
> I believe my attempt at a kernel ebuild is generally working (using the 
> 2.0 source release plus the above patch for GCC 3.4), though currently 
> only for 2.6.9-xen0 and with a little too much manual intervention. It 
> also compiles the rest of Xen + tools + docs without any problems, but 
> doesn't quite know how to install them. Anyway, I should end up with 
> something useful soon, so I'd be interested to know if anybody with 
> Gentoo would be interested in testing/using it.
> 
> 
>>  -- Keir
>>
> 


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Re: Build process

[Philip Taylor]

Jerome Brown wrote on 10/11/2004 01:38:
> I'm running Gentoo and would be very happy to test etc - I have been 
> thinking about writing an ebuild myself, but haven't got around to it.

I've uploaded my current attempt at ebuilds to 
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/pjt47/xentoo/ (and mentioned it at 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70161). I'm not sure whether 
anyone else has tried it yet, but it compiles fine for me and only 
crashes one in three times ;-)

> Jerome

Thanks,
-- 
Philip Taylor
philip@zaynar.demon.co.uk


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Re: Build process

[Jerome Brown]

I'm guessing you meant the kernel Makefile? If so, then that should
solve the issue as I understand it - probably better to ask the devel
list that question.

Jerome

Philip Taylor wrote:
> I made the ebuild add "ARCH=xen" to the top of Makefile, which seems to 
> remove the need for specifying it on the command line (because otherwise 
> I forget and mess everything up, every single time I try to reconfigure 
> it...) -- is that a safe/sensible thing to do, or would it be better to 
> have users explicitly set ARCH when building?
> 
> Jerome Brown wrote on 14/11/2004 20:26:
> 
>> A note on the install document - add ARCH="xen" to the xconfig line so 
>> it reads:
>> ARCH="xen" make xconfig
>> the compile may b0rk without it.
>>
>> Jerome
> 
> 
>> Philip Taylor wrote:
>>
>>> Jerome Brown wrote on 10/11/2004 01:38:
>>>
>>>> I'm running Gentoo and would be very happy to test etc - I have been 
>>>> thinking about writing an ebuild myself, but haven't got around to it.
>>>
>>>
>>> I've uploaded my current attempt at ebuilds to 
>>> http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/pjt47/xentoo/ (and mentioned it at 
>>> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70161). I'm not sure whether 
>>> anyone else has tried it yet, but it compiles fine for me and only 
>>> crashes one in three times ;-)
> 
> 





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