build/host libs for cross compiling

[Robert Schwebel]

Hi, 

I'm the maintainer of PTXdist [1], which is a build system for Embedded
Linux projects. One of our aims is to provide patches for upstream
packets, in order to make overall cross compilability better.

Although most times autotoolized projects cross compile out of the box
or can be fixed easily, there is a certain class of projects I've not
found the right solution for:

There are situations where generator tools are being run during the
compile stage, which is no real problem if the generator tools are
correctly built with CC_FOR_BUILD. However, especially with larger
projects [2], people often build their own support libraries as a part
of a project; now the problem comes in when generator tools need to link
against this support libs; examples are 

- extra/comp_err in MySQL, linking against several freshly built libs
- IDL compiler in TAO, which itself links against libace

and others. 

Is there a standard solution for this kind of problem, or is there some
project out there which can act as a good example howt do do that?

At the moment we solve it in PTXdist by having two packets: one for the
development host and one for the target system, and tweak the "build"
architecture compiled files into the other tree, but that is no sane
solution in the long term. It helps for our problem, but doesn' solve
cross compilation for the upstream packets.

Robert

[1] http://www.pengutronix.de/software/ptxdist/index_en.html
[2] e.g MySQL or ACE/TAO
-- 
 Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de
 Pengutronix - Linux Solutions for Science and Industry
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