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mcc2
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Joined: 06 Sep 2012
Posts: 25

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:18 am    Post subject: Upgradeing/Emerging/Compiling on a host system Reply with quote

Hi,

compared to an average desktop PC, a beaglebone as not /that/ fast ;) ...

Compiling larger application like KDE or firefox natively on a beaglebone
could take a somehow longer time.

Is it therefore possible to do the whole Gentoo-business (eix/emerge/compile)
on the same system, on which the kernel was compiled (following this tutorial:
http://dev.gentoo.org/~armin76/arm/beaglebone/install.xml ) which the appropiate
toolchain. Would un way faster....and would not wear out my SD-card...

How can I accomplish that?

Thank you very much in advance for any help!

Have a nice weekend! :)
Best regards,
mcc
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jlpoole
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Joined: 01 Nov 2005
Posts: 476
Location: Salem, OR

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 3:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

distcc is your friend.

I have a SheevaPlug and it would take over 24 hours to compile GCC on it; however, when I set up a distributed compiler using my AMD Phenom II, it looks less than an hour, and probably more in the range of 20 minutes. It was wonderful, I could through almost anything at it; however, there were some limits. Then my cross compiler broker... I know now why and Vapier's attitude that I derived from bugs and postings was just rebuild it. That kind of took the fun out of it and made me question the approach to its development. Despite that, I'm tempted to do it for the BeagleBone as I did build a new cross compiler on the Phenom for it and compiled the tutorial's kernel and the Angstrom kernel on it.
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mcc2
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Joined: 06 Sep 2012
Posts: 25

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 5:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi jlpoole,

as I understand distcc will "only" put the load of compiling from the beaglebone.
The whole "meta stuff" like eix-sync and the database business for package
handling and the input/output on /usr/portage/distfiles and the gentoo
stuff below /var will still be handled on the bone and therefore put a lot of
write (and read) cycles on the SD card.

I am curious whether it is possible to do everything which is not "plain usage"
on a dedicated system which provides a rootfs a kernel and modules, which
need only to be copied to the target system then.

From the functional point of view the way Angstrom goes but with the contents
of Gentoo and "everything is bases on source" instead of binary packages like
*.ipkg in the case of Angstrom.

Is that possible ?

Best regards,
mcc
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jlpoole
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Joined: 01 Nov 2005
Posts: 476
Location: Salem, OR

PostPosted: Sat Sep 08, 2012 6:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, your analysis is spot on re: pushing the compiling load to another server, but keeping the bookkeeping on the bone. And there is additional bookkeeping when using distcc if you have logging and I'm guessing that would add more read/writes to the SDHC. On the Sheevaplug I used USB stick memory and hard disks... it is risky for if there is a failure with the hard disk (as I experienced), you may be in a state of not being able to boot your system normally and having to resort to extraordinary measures, e.g. rescue disk.

I suppose you could use NFS to other servers (I think the Angstrom kernel has NFS client activated) and have /usr/portage mounted elsewhere, or on a USB device? I'm just learning about using NFS now so cannot say with any degree of experience or authority.
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