[rescue] Bigger Iron at Home (was: SNMP, Baby!)

[Meelis Roos]

> To do the same for Linux you need to setup a complete cross toolchain,
> prepare all the glibc stuff for cross compiling, do a lot of include
> path twisting so that allways the Linux/glibc stuff is used, ... fight
> with the autoconf scripts of the Linux-ware (I doubt that they are cross
> compile aware), ... Nothing you can do in a weekend. In practice all the
> source has to be cross compile proof. AFAIK it took months to make the
> NetBSD source cross compilable.

Making a cross-compiler for kernel-level stuff is easy, search for
cross-gcc-howto. It's somewhat outdated but actually quite good, Usually
it takes 1 evening to get this level of crosscompiler working (I once
had problems with mips or sparc targe that took longer).

Having the libs and includes in cross-environment and building real
applications certainly takes more time. Autoconf by itself is usually
not a problem, the problem comes from autoconf tests that compile _and
run_ test programs.

BTW, automake/autoconf gives fat warnings when you try to make something
that is not crosscompile-friendly.

I have been thinking of setting up full a m68k cross environment for
Debian m68k but have had no time to actually try it. hppa target in
Debian uses cross-compilations (at least in part) and some other
architecture too IIRC. They probably can't compile everything but still
a significant part to help the compile process.

-- 
Meelis Roos (mroos at linux.ee)