cross compiling a system

Aiken · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 3:11 pm Post subject: cross compiling a system

I am interested in trying gentoo on my sparc. I want to cross compile the entire system, x86 -> sparc.

Where I am coming from.
My main system started life as a linux from scratch system that now has my own build system on top of it. As of tonight I am at the stage where I can cross compile a working lfs stage1. For something to do I have started a stage2 compile on the sparc. The problem is how slow it will be. The file system is via nfs. It takes abt 12 minutes just to populate /dev and a further 26 minutes to unpack the kernel source. Gcc2 will take over 10 hours, gcc 3.2.1 takes 18 hours (only 50+ times longer than my main machine). I don't really want to know how long glibc will take. My bet is I will get sick of waiting.

At the moment I don't think it will take me too long before I will be able to cross compile a stage2. I hope.

Is there any effort currently being put into being able to cross compile gentoo? All I have seen so far is local compiles. I want to be able to build on my athlon, copy the files to the sparc and reboot. This is how I currently upgrade my other x86 machines.

I have wondered about looking at this but at the moment I am not very famillair with gentoo. So have some learning there first. I also don't want to duplicate anyone elses effort if I try this myself.

Kumba · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 8:07 pm Post subject:

First off, what is your sparc system? Is it a sun4d, sun4m, or sun4c system (commonly referred to as sparc32)? Or is it sun4u (Ultrasparc)?

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

Aiken · Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 9:41 pm Post subject:

Kumba · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 1:15 am Post subject:

Ahh, I can see why you seek to cross compile. Your sparc system must be quite slow.

Cross compiling itself seems to be an art form almost....there are multiple ways to doing it, and most achieve similar results. Rather than attempt to explain in detail here the process, I refer you to this link in the Alternate Architectures forum where I made a very similar post on this topic already containing valuable links to information on Cross Compiling.

You can read my post here.

--Kumba
_________________
"The past tempts us, the present confuses us, the future frightens us. And our lives slip away, moment by moment, lost in that vast, terrible in-between."
--Emperor Turhan, Centauri Republic

Aiken · Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2003 1:45 am Post subject:

That looks like it is about setting up the the tool chain.

I have already done this and have been using it. Some of my notes are at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~boddingt/sparc/

That was easier than actually getting some of the packages to cross compile. The sun4c runs at 40MHz. Your right, this is a very simillar topic as I also want to be able to do a full cross compile of a gentoo system.