[Buildroot] Using custom kernel headers instead toolchain headers

[Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout@mind.be>]

On Monday 19 March 2012 19:55:52 lexa wrote:
> I use buildroot-2012.02 with external toolchain named "Sourcery
> CodeBench ARM 2011.03". 
> 
> This toolchain contain linux headers, but i dont want to use them. I
> want to use header compiled from my kernel, is it possible ?

 Short answer: no.

 The kernel headers are used to compile the C library, which needs to
know which system calls exist, how various things are defined, and
sometimes which features exist.  So using different kernel headers
for compiling other libraries or programs is a bad idea, because it
may lead to inconsistencies.

 However, the kernel you compile doesn't need to be the same as the
toolchain's kernel headers.  It just has to be newer.  This is
possible because Linus makes sure that every Linux release is
ABI compatible with previous releases.


 There is one reason why you may want to use different kernel headers
than the ones of the toolchain, and that's when you have a vendor
kernel that defines additional ioctl's used by device drivers that
are not (yet) upstreamed.  In this case, you need access to your
vendor kernel's headers.  AFAIK buildroot doesn't really support this
use case.

 Regards,
 Arnout

-- 
Arnout Vandecappelle                               arnout at mind be
Senior Embedded Software Architect                 +32-16-286540
Essensium/Mind                                     http://www.mind.be
G.Geenslaan 9, 3001 Leuven, Belgium                BE 872 984 063 RPR Leuven
LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoutvandecappelle
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