[U-Boot] U-Boot and ELDK

[Jerry Van Baren <gerald.vanbaren@ge.com>]

Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> Dear Roman,
> 
> In message <40a670230809112359j4c1d9cf1p56afc8114b81bf6d@mail.gmail.com> you wrote:

[snip]

>> How necessary is it to install ELDK in order to be able to compile
>> U-Boot for non-PPC platform?
> 
> It's not necessary. You can use any  other  (decent)  tool  chain  as
> well.  The  nice  thing  with the ELDk is that it comes ready-to-use,
> well tested, and in indentical versions for ARM, MIPS,  and  PowerPC.
> And  it's  not  only a cross tool chain, but also the native run time
> environment which will come in handy once you got U-Boot running  and
> go forward to porting Linux :-)

To chime in 2c from rumor an innuendo (and some actual experience), some 
of the cross compilation tool builds are actually scripts that pull down 
sources from internet sites and apply patches (also pulled down from 
internet sites) to those sources.  This is done every time you build the 
cross tools.  You do not control the sources/patches.

While this is excellent for staying up to date (bleeding edge) on the 
cross tool environment, the downside is that you cannot go back and 
re-create a given cross tool environment because yesterdays build may 
use a different version of the sources/patches than todays build.

ELDK is a well packaged binary distribution (with full source available) 
that can be archived and (re)installed at any time in the future with 
predictable results.

It also captures all the sources necessary to recreate a given version 
so you can rebuild version 4.0[1] and have it match the version 4.0 you 
used months/years ago.  For some uses, this doesn't matter.  For long 
term business use where you may have to reinstall your tool set long 
after it has been declared "obsolete", this is a vital difference.

> Best regards,
> 
> Wolfgang Denk
> 

Thanks to denx.de for providing the ELDK,
gvb

[1] Theoretically ;-).  Rebuilding from source in practice may be 
challenging.