Re: [crosstool-NG] Design discussion

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas dot petazzoni at free-electrons dot com>]

Le Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:11:03 +0200,
"Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@anciens.enib.fr> a Ãcrit :

> Just my turn to rant a little bit ;-) For many, cross-compiling can't
> be avoided. Running under an emulator is biased. Your ./configure
> might detect some specifics of the machine it's running on (the
> emulator) that might prove wrong on the real hardware, Or the other
> way around, miss some specifics of the real hardware that the
> emulator does not provide.

We happened to discuss Firmware Linux during the  Build Tools BOF  at
Embedded Linux Conference last week in San Francisco. For the audience,
Firmware Linux indeed looked like an interesting proof of concept, but
that proof of concept would *never* deprecate the need to normal
cross-compilers, normal cross-compiling and tools like Crosstool-NG.

Reason ? Just because Firmware Linux makes the assumption that a Qemu
version exists for each and every architecture in the world. It
basically makes Qemu a mandatory component to be able to build code
for a new architecture. Is Qemu available for NIOS ? For Microblaze ?
Not that I'm aware of.

Therefore, besides Firmware Linux's existence, tools like Crosstool-NG
will always be necessary, and well-maintained, simple, tools like
Crosstool-NG are more than welcome. Yann, I made quite an extensive
promotion of Crosstool-NG both during my talk on Buildroot and the BOF
on Build tools during last week conference.

Cheers,

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

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