[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Hi,

I tried to build the avahi package on a freshly installed Ubuntu system
(which has almost zero development related packages installed), and the
build failed because it couldn't find "intltool" on the host.

Should we build this tool ourself, or should we rely on the user to
install it ?

This tool itself relies on Perl. Can we assume that host Perl is a
mandatory dependency of Buildroot, or should we also build Perl ?

Thanks,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers and embedded Linux development,
consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Bjørn Forsman]

2009/12/16 Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>:
> Hi,
>
> I tried to build the avahi package on a freshly installed Ubuntu system
> (which has almost zero development related packages installed), and the
> build failed because it couldn't find "intltool" on the host.
>
> Should we build this tool ourself, or should we rely on the user to
> install it ?
>
> This tool itself relies on Perl. Can we assume that host Perl is a
> mandatory dependency of Buildroot, or should we also build Perl ?

IMHO, I'd like for Buildroot to build the least amount of host tools so that
build times can be kept down. I often start from scratch... :-)

Best regards,
Bj?rn Forsman

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Le Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:50:26 +0100,
Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> a ?crit :

> IMHO, I'd like for Buildroot to build the least amount of host tools
> so that build times can be kept down. I often start from
> scratch... :-)

True, but on the other hand, the approach we've been following since
Buildroot maintenance has been taken over by Peter is that we should
only rely on "basic" tools on the host. That's the reason why we build
autoconf, automake, glib, pkg-config and other stuff for the host as
needed. It makes the compilation process a little longer, but on the
other hand, it makes the build process a *lot* more predictable.

In the past, we had tons of reports of build failures that were caused
by issues in varying versions of the host tools. And these problems are
particularly annoying since the Buildroot developers often can't
reproduce them.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers and embedded Linux development,
consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Bjørn Forsman]

2009/12/16 Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>:
> Le Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:50:26 +0100,
> Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> a ?crit :
>
>> IMHO, I'd like for Buildroot to build the least amount of host tools
>> so that build times can be kept down. I often start from
>> scratch... :-)
>
> True, but on the other hand, the approach we've been following since
> Buildroot maintenance has been taken over by Peter is that we should
> only rely on "basic" tools on the host. That's the reason why we build
> autoconf, automake, glib, pkg-config and other stuff for the host as
> needed. It makes the compilation process a little longer, but on the
> other hand, it makes the build process a *lot* more predictable.
>
> In the past, we had tons of reports of build failures that were caused
> by issues in varying versions of the host tools. And these problems are
> particularly annoying since the Buildroot developers often can't
> reproduce them.

I see. And I do understand that having predictable builds is important. I'm
just a bit afraid that Buildroot will turn into OpenEmbedded some day :-)

Best regards,
Bj?rn Forsman

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Sven Neumann]

On Wed, 2009-12-16 at 15:47 +0100, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Le Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:50:26 +0100,
> Bj?rn Forsman <bjorn.forsman@gmail.com> a ?crit :
> 
> > IMHO, I'd like for Buildroot to build the least amount of host tools
> > so that build times can be kept down. I often start from
> > scratch... :-)
> 
> True, but on the other hand, the approach we've been following since
> Buildroot maintenance has been taken over by Peter is that we should
> only rely on "basic" tools on the host. That's the reason why we build
> autoconf, automake, glib, pkg-config and other stuff for the host as
> needed. It makes the compilation process a little longer, but on the
> other hand, it makes the build process a *lot* more predictable.

I understand this. But building perl just to get intltool into a clean
state seems a little bit overshot to me and I am worrying about the
increased build time this would cause.


Sven

[Buildroot] avahi dependencies on host tools

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> writes:

Hi,

 Thomas> True, but on the other hand, the approach we've been following
 Thomas> since Buildroot maintenance has been taken over by Peter is
 Thomas> that we should only rely on "basic" tools on the host. That's
 Thomas> the reason why we build autoconf, automake, glib, pkg-config
 Thomas> and other stuff for the host as needed. It makes the
 Thomas> compilation process a little longer, but on the other hand, it
 Thomas> makes the build process a *lot* more predictable.

As always it is a tradeoff:

- How common (likely to be installed/available in dist) is the dependency?
- How big/difficult is it to build?
- Do we have specific version requirements?
- Do we need special patches (like we do for pkg-config)?

I would argue for us being able to rely on perl on the host (needed to
build the Linux kernel among many other things), but specific versions
of E.G. auto* is a lot harder.

Intltool is as you say just a perl script, so providing that ourselves
seems the best option.

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard