[Fedora-packaging] Re: Cross-compiling guidelines

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 07:40 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 07:30 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > 
> > > There are at least 2 review requests for cross compilers which have been
> > > stuck in FE-GUIDELINES for over a year (to the point where the submitter
> > > closed the reports) supposedly waiting for specific guidelines for
> > > cross-compiling, so I wonder what happened to those guidelines. 
> > 
> > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/CrossCompilers
> 
> That draft needs some work. 
IMO, this draft should be deleted.

> Ralf added notes to each item that
> essentially says "don't need it. don't want it."
I essentially say: Cross toolchains are ordinary applications. There
should be no need to special case them.

In practice, this is not a much of a problem, with one exception:

The GNU toolchains use ${prefix}/${target_alias}/. This directory is not
covered by the FHS. Changing the GNU toolchains to use something else,
is technically hardly possible (More precisely: It would imply a lot of
hard work and can easily evolve into a package maintainer's nightmare).

I.e. to cater the GNU toolchains practice, only one addition to the
guidelines would be required:
- %_prefix/${target_alias} is reserved for cross toolchains targetting
target "$target_alias
- cross-toolchains must consistently use the same target_alias for all
of its components.

Another wide area would be "recipes to workaround the various bugs in
rpm cross-building triggers". I don't think this should be covered by
the FPG. May-be an addendum to the FPG, or a wiki owned and written by
the "Embedded SIG" would be appropriate.

Better: rpm and redhat-rpm-config should be fixed.

> I'd tend to agree with him on everything but the package naming (I think
> having the "cross-" prefix fits in with our existing naming policies),
> but I'm not married to it. If the people packaging cross toolchains are
> vehemently against that naming, it would be good to know.

I say: Mandating prefixing with "cross-" is non-sense, like mandating
prefixing native tools with "native-" would be. Shall people wanting it
use it, I won't. Package names should be "unique" and "sufficiently
self- explanatory" - For GNU toolchains, I recommend
$target_alias-<component>, but that's just my personal preference.

Ralf