On Nov 12, 2007 12:44 PM, Kai Ruottu <karuottu@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Andrew Haley wrote: > > > The guy is building a cross compiler, not a native compiler. > > > > And you believe that building system libraries from scratch is going > > to be easier? > > > Probably the case is about a big misunderstanding like : > > 1. the target binutils will be made for the cross host > 2. the target GCC will be made for the cross host > 3. the target glibc will be made for the cross host (NOT only for the > $target as some dummies > could think :) > > If the target glibc was produced with some other GCC version, this maybe > could cause some > compatability problems when linking those objects produced with the > cross GCC with the > ones in the glibc... One possible misunderstanding more. Nightstrike > could explain what kind > of misunderstandings he has and why the previous step 3 is seen being > necessary. Once you know of a misunderstanding, it tends to stop being misunderstood :) > With native GCC builds I haven't seen many thinking that after updating > the GCC, also the > installed glibc and other target libraries should be updated or > recompiled with the newer GCC- > version (the results must be better!). Nightstrike could try this when > next time updating the > native GCC :) The OP, Kai, was asking about how to build a cross compiler, not a native compiler. You need a runtime hosted for the target platform when building a cross compiler. > Or behind all this there is some political idea like : > > o all Linuces should be 100% binary compatible so generic Linux > headers and generic Linux > libraries can be used when producing apps for some Linux/CPU system > > That there are those generic Firefoxes, Thunderbirds, OpenOffices > distributed in binary format > (but are there for the Linux/x86_64's?) quite easily hints this being > true... So nowadays Linux > should be "just like Windows", all apps distributed as binaries made by > generic "crosstool"-based > toolchains.... > > People will easily forget that there are also the X11 libraries, the > Gnome, the KDE, the ncurses, > the termcap and all kind of other target libraries. That glibc doesn't > cater that much... Producing > also all these would be a big job, copying and unpacking the originals > for the target is much > easier! With multi-targets the task can be more complicated, so > producing a separate cross- > toolchain for each distro can be the most easy way... > > The OP was asking about how to build a cross compiler to target x86_64-pc-linux and be hosted on i686-pc-linux. I'm not sure why you started talking about numerous other projects. To build a *complete* toolchain, you need binutils, gcc, and a runtime. glibc works as a runtime, as does uclibc and others. The only discussion is whether it's easier to compile the various pieces yourself, use a tool like crosstool (or even buildroot), or download at least part of the toolchain requirements (such as the target-hosted runtime) from some repository like fedora.
