Re: Question regarding Perl cross-compilation on arm-linux

(CC-ed to p5p because this kind of discussion should go to p5p even before 
reaching my mailbox)

On Monday 05 May 2008 20:19:53 Suzanth wrote:
> Hi Mr.Vadim,
>
> in the perl source tree in directory Cross please read the
> files README.new and build-arm-n770.sh - they are most recent ones
> -> Can you please give me the URL for this ?
>
> As of now, I'm guided by the cross-compilation README by Nicholas Clark on
> CPAN. Are there changes to this one??
> http://search.cpan.org/src/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.3/Cross/

perl-5.8.3 is obviously not the latest perl - please try 5.10.0.

Nicholas is maintainer and leader of this series of releases of Perl, but he 
is not actually the provider of all ideas within perl source trees, with all 
respect to him and huge amount of time he dedicates to Perl.

I saw incomplete cross-compiled 5.8.3 version on already mentioned Nokia-n700, 
but you surely should try la-test!


>
>
> Do you think that compiling natively on the target is a better way to go
> than cross-compiling? If so , how do I do that?

native build is much easier because Perl relies on Perl itself for its own 
build-chain (it builds so-called miniperl first, and then this 'miniperl' 
aims in further building)

Most of the time, cross-compiled 'miniperl' is replaced with full-blown perl 
for small uncapable devices, and this is enough for small tasks.

All in all, possibility of native build relies on your hardware.
It is quite possible be that you only have cross-compile chain and no native 
GCC.

Another example is from my past experience - I have linux-based satellite 
receiver, which have 2.6.9 linux kernel and PPC processor with 32 Mbytes RAM.
It is designed to use CDK (cross-compile development kit) to cross-compile 
binaries, but it appeared that it runs just fine Fedora binaries for this 
kind of processor - so I was able to native-build perl for it, and also just 
run perl provided with Fedora binaries.


>
> Thank you so much for providing me these answers. I'm on a deadline (May
> 23)

I don't know details of your deadline, but if you have ability to $sponsor 
this part of project - you will get the results, of course.

Actually sponsorships is not always the $money - you can achieve results by 
yourself and provide results of your work to the community - all is greatly 
appreciated.

Just for the record, I tried to apply the grant 2008q2 for this kind of work, 
but I will hardly pass even first stage of consideration, given my 
zero-practice on the field of grants :) :) :)

> to successfully compile perl scripts on my arm-linux target (arcom - 
> Intel Xscale PXA 255 - Embedded linux)

given that you have cross-compile toolset, building the perl isn't 
complicated, but will require some changes to the build process - so you will 
likely see some breakage and you should fix them on the go.

Whenever you will fix building scripts, please be sure to share the changes, 
so your name will be mentioned within Perl's hall of fame :)

With best regards,
Vadim.

• Re: Question regarding Perl cross-compilation on arm-linux by Vadim Konovalov
• Re: Question regarding Perl cross-compilation on arm-linux by Vadim Konovalov