Fedora and Cross Compiling

[Oliver Falk]

On 06/08/2007 11:21 AM, Andy Green wrote:
> Oliver Falk wrote:
> 
>>> I would like to see cross compilation become a standard method in
>>> Fedora.  It scales where native builds don't.  There might be faster arm
>>> chips these days, but lets not forget all the underpowered embedded CPUs
>>> and costly systems like s390.  Bootstrapping is simplified.  People
>>> without access to hardware can work on build problems (Simulators are
>>> good for this too).
>> True. But is cross compilation really as reliable as native compilation
>> is? I'm not experienced with cross compilation... But I think some
>> errors will only occur on *real native hardware*...
> 
> Cross toolchains are made like this: you use your normal host compiler,
> for i386 say, to compile the gcc sources configured to emit target, say
> ARM, code.  So you end up with an i386 executable compiler that emits
> ARM code.
>
> Native compilers would be built on an ARM box or emulation creating an
> ARM executable compiler that emits ARM code.  But in both cases, the
> compiler is coming from the same gcc sources.

Of course so far I understood the system already. :-)

[ ... ]

>> If there are volunteers for a arch and you have some man power who can
>> support the ArchTeam, that would be great - I think. If the arch-team
>> doesn't want cross compilation..... Let 'em alone. :-)
> 
> Cross is a lot less mysterious and magical than it sounds.  Once it is
> sorted out according to Fedora's high engineering standards, being able
> to build for any supported arch on one physical platform with one
> filesystem at native platform speed will in fact be simpler, faster,
> more conistent and cheaper than the workarounds.

Sure it's not much magic and mystery, but there are some issues we need
to think about... (See later posts that I'll write now :-) ).

-of