[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers]http://press.nokia.com:80/PR/200605/1051308_5.html

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 03:55:48PM +0300, Tomi Ollila wrote:
> >> I recommend that a live cd or similiar would be launched some time in
> >> advance.
> >>
> >> That would allow developers to compile their apps in there and switch
> >> their own systems to 2.0 when 2.0 is in final state and 2006 is out. 
> >
> > What's the problem of apt-get installing a new EABI Scrathcbox toolchain
> > + creating a separate target for IT2006 (using that toolchain)?
> 
> I and my colleaque set up scratchbox environment separately 
> for N770 and suprisingly those were so different than code compiled on
> my system did not work on his  

Then you're using either a different Scratchbox, toolchain or
developer rootstrap version.  Note that the toolchain you've
set up for compiling the code in the Scratchbox *must* match
the libc6 package that's in the rootstrap.  Otherwise you
(obviously) get all kinds of problems.


> Also, the initial setup was so pain...

Depends on what distro you're using.  :-)

On Debian (or Ubuntu for that matter), it's just "apt-get install".


> > You can have multiple targets in Scratchbox, each with their own
> > CPU architecture, toolchain, software etc...
> 
> I'd just like to have one tarball that can be extracted somewhere
> and when chrooting there I could compile programs for N770 and 
> test those there. I don't gain anything else than pain setting
> up the system differently.

All Scratchbox components are also available as tarballs,
but then you have to configure them yourself besides setting
up whatever targets you want to use.

Note that Scratchbox is not (just) maemo build environment,
it's a tool for cross-compiling whole Linux distributions,
such as Maemo.



> ... after chrooting I could run apt-get dist-upgrade to be in
> sync with newest updates and wit others.

Scratchbox is basically a chroot environment, but a one that's
specifically set up to do cross-compilation:
- that looks to the compiled software like the compilation were native
- can optionally use real HW to run the (autotools) test program

There's no other tool that could build Debian from Scratch, let
alone cross-compile it like Scratchbox can.

For more on the problems on cross-building, see:
http://www.scratchbox.org/documentation/general/tutorials/explained.html
(it's a bit old and doesn't mention problems in cross-building
Debian which is several magnitudes harder problem.)


> (And, if this system were much smaller than the current one that
> would be nice too...)

If Sbox would use the (core/find/textutils, python/perl..) binaries
from the surrounding distro instead of being self-contained, it would:
- Be tied to specific distro and specific version of that distro:
  -> If you have other (version of the) distro, you would need to
     build scratchbox yourself (but it would be much smaller)
- Debugging problems in the build environment would be hell because
  each user would have different set/version of the build utilities
  and their own problems


	- Eero