iLiad How-to: build a toolchain for the iliad using crosstool

[ericshliao]

Originally Posted by jhench

Is there anyone out there who has already compiled things ON the iliad directly? It would be really nice if one could compile a bit in the background while reading .

Doing compile on iLiad? How long will it take for me to do the compile task on iLIad? I can't image it. I did build gcc using crosstool, but I never thought to use it on iLiad.

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by jhench

Storage space on the root file system is not that much of an issue on gigabyte-NAS drives, I would say that's the main difference between them and the iLiad. Otherwise, most of today's NAS machines are based on an ARM CPU and 64 MB of RAM, just like our iLiad.
(...)
Since I have been compiling all software I needed directly on the NAS (e.g. over night due to the slow CPU) I am wondering if this was an option for the iLiad as well. Does anyone of you know how I could arrange it to put e.g. antarctica's native toolchain on the iLiad to get a compiler on the iLiad?

My experience differs a little to yours (I use a nslu2 with debian, which has a paltry 32MB of RAM), but you're right that compiling in those NAS machines is reasonable (myself: I do it to compile things for my zaurus, to execute them in a debian chroot).

But the problem is that in those machines you have:
1) lots of swapspace
2) storage not limited by a number of write cycles (CF and SD cards get broken after a lot of read-erase-write cycles; not important for normal filesystem use but very important for swap partitions).

So, although doable, not recommended.

That said, I have compiled in the past small programs in the debian chroot in the zaurus without enabling swap (the Zaurus SL-5500 also has 64MB of RAM), and I recall that scotty1024 did test a debian chroot in the iliad and it worked well (he even used emacs in there).

The main problem you would have is to compile a gcc with softfloat for the iliad (debian arm uses "hardware FP", and debian armel uses EABI, both of them not compatible with the iliad binaries). You can try to rip apart the one of pdaXrom 1.1.0beta1 as it should be compatible, but no idea if the libc there is newer than in the iliad or not; they are both named libc-2.3.3 but the iliad one if from CVS prior to 2.3.3 release... internally is 2.3.2.

Personally I think that it doesn't worth the effort; in case that you have to compile things in the iliad its quicker the setup a debian chroot, and compile and execute things from there.

P.D.: There could be othe possiblities; one of the is to compile the gcc yourself in the PC using OpenEmbedded's bitbake.

[ericshliao]

Suppose all obstacles in reality not exist, can the toolchain built by crosstool be used on iLiad?

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by ericshliao

Suppose all obstacles in reality not exist, can the toolchain built by crosstool be used on iLiad?

No. You would have to build a native toolchain. BUT to build that toolchain you can use the croos-compiling one you did with crosstool (hope that makes sense to you).

[ericshliao]

Originally Posted by Antartica

BUT to build that toolchain you can use the croos-compiling one you did with crosstool (hope that makes sense to you).

You mean that the toolchain built by crosstool can be used to build gcc runnable on iLiad? That's reasonable. Just like what I did to port apps to run on iLiad. Thanx.