Re: PATCH [0/3]: Simplify the kernel build by removing perl.

Mark A. Miller
2009-01-12T10:23:08Z

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 4:18 AM, Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:50:31PM -0600, Mark A. Miller wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> wrote:
>> >> There are several other packages which are broken for embedded
>> >> architectures, which I will hopefully attempt to fix by submitting patches
>> >> upstream. But this is why we should be cautious about including new tools
>> >> for compiling the kernel. Sam Ravnborg was correct in that a C program to do
>> >> the work would be the proper way. But by not addressing a currently existing
>> >> problem with an adequate replacement with something that does not exist
>> >> currently, seems faulty.
>> >
>> > Why are "make headers_install" such a crucial thing for your
>> > embedded environmnet?
>>
>> Sanity check. If the environment cannot replicate itself, then
>> something has been faulty in the cross-compiling stage, that was used
>> to propagate a native environment for the target architecture.
>
> So you actually build your target toolchain on your target?
>
> Sam

Correct, albeit under emulation, such as QEMU. Obviously the target
architecture, such as an embedded MIPSEL device with only 8MB of flash
and 64MB of RAM, is not going to (particularly well) re-compile its
entire environment, QEMU allows it nicely with distcc at a reasonable
speed. (Albeit there is no distconfigure, but that's entirely an
unrelated tanget of muck and despair and rants against configure, but
we're not going there...)

--
Mark A. Miller
mark@mirell.org