Building ARM ports (was Re: Globalscale Dreamplug and 8.3 RELEASE)

[Mattia Rossi]

> The biggest problem we have is build versus run dependencies. When 
> crossbuilding port foo to run on arm, that port decides it needs the 
> compile_a_foo port to build the code, so it goes off and cross-builds 
> compile_a_foo, then wants to run the resulting arm binaries on the x86 
> host. The only way I know of to fix that is to tediously identify and 
> pre-build all the build-time requirements needed by any port you 
> intend to cross-build. Ports that have their own build systems and 
> custom tools are essentially impossible to work with.

Those are exactly the issues I've run into when attempting to cross 
build. See my story here:

http://matrossi.blogspot.it/2011/08/cross-compiling-ports-for-arm-under.html

My Qemu experience:

http://matrossi.blogspot.it/2011/09/freebsd-arm-on-qemu-in-virtualbox.html

but it didn't prove useful for building ports as there wasn't enough 
virtual memory to build them, because it fully emulates the 32M of RAM 
of a gumstix board as well..

Just in case you're interested.

Mat