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Date:      Tue, 14 Jun 2016 07:01:17 -0700
From:      Tim Kientzle <tim@kientzle.com>
To:        lausts@acm.org
Cc:        freebsd-arm@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Crossbuild Failure on Arm
Message-ID:  <9A77CE9C-C154-4449-9EF7-CA268D763B98@kientzle.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160613182234.GA72262@mail.laus.org>
References:  <20160613182234.GA72262@mail.laus.org>

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> On Jun 13, 2016, at 11:22 AM, Thomas Laus <lausts@acm.org> wrote:
>=20
> I wanted to add a few NIC cards to my Beaglebone, so my next step was
> to build a toolchain for the arm arch.

The advice you saw for using xdev originated a few years back as a way =
to build U-Boot when cross-compiling.  This was at a time when all of =
the ports compilers were broken on ARM, so xdev was one of the few =
available options.  Today, the ports compilers are working, and U-Boot =
is mostly being built in ports using those, so there=E2=80=99s not much =
point to using xdev today.

You=E2=80=99ve never needed xdev to cross-build FreeBSD itself.  The =
existing build infrastructure is smart enough to build the necessary =
cross-compilers as needed.

Cross-compiling ports is a more complex venture; the current best =
approach seems to be a hybrid environment that combines cross-compilers =
with user mode qemu for running occasional tools targeting the =
destination architecture.

If you want to develop kernel drivers, you might also consider native =
development.  The Beaglebone is fast enough to provide a comfortable dev =
environment for small projects like drivers (that=E2=80=99s how I did =
all my work on cpsw a few years back).  Loading and unloading drivers is =
pretty quick.

The only caveat:  Local driver development will crash the machine =
occasionally, which will lose recent writes to the filesystem.  Use git =
and push your work to some other machine regularly.  NFS can also help =
here.

Cheers,

Tim




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