On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Michael Hope michael.hope@linaro.org wrote:
(top posting as summarising)
It's funny how things happen at the same time. I've been asked a few times about how to compile Linaro GCC so I started this page a few days ago: https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/ToolChain/Using
The goal is to describe how to build the toolchain outputs such as GCC and GDB in common configurations such as native or cross.
I see four classes of users: 1. Toolchain hackers who know how to build the product and start from source 2. Mid-level engineers who have experience with Unix tools and want to know how to build from source 3. Integrators who want a supported build script that automates everything but that they can customise 4. End users who just want a binary
(1) is fine as they look after themselves. (2) will be covered by the 'Using' pages. (3) is along the lines of my cross-build[1] Makefile. (4) is in Marcin's queue[2], but there's no technical reason that Linaro couldn't use the scripts from Marcin or item 3 to do an official binary tarball that targets the Linaro evaluation builds. Note that we're not set up to support end users directly so having a product like ARM's DS-5 between the working group and end users would be good.
This is all new, unplanned work. I'm going to do (3) in the background and turn it into a product as it will save me time overall, but we should discuss 2, 3, and 4 for the next cycle. Yves, can I suggest you bring this up at the next TSC meeting?
Sounds sensible.
For now, my only real concern was that we should document the absence of a generic binary toolchain, and document the presence of the cross compiler packages, so that people don't burn too many cycles searching for something that isn't there. A few words on http://www.linaro.org/downloads/ and on https://launchpad.net/linaro-toolchain might be enough.
Providing generic binary toolchain downloads (including, optionally, a Windows-hosted build) is certainly nice-to-have; if we can accomodate this in the next cycle it would be a bonus -- so it sounds like it's worth discussing at the TSC.
Cheers ---Dave