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NetBSD Crossbuild Hosted On Mac OS X 10.3

Posted by timothy on from the swapping-about dept.

Dan writes "A few weeks ago Xavier Humbert succesfully compiled NetBSD-current on a MacOSX 10.3 with an i386 target. He has provided a summary of his crossbuild execution as well as his build script. But why bother crossbuilding ? Erik Berls's article explains the process of cross compilation on NetBSD. He says that NetBSD's crossbuild framework allows a host to build a version of NetBSD 1.6 or later regardless of the version of the host. Crossbuilding has several major benefits, if you have production servers, you can build the OS without needing to load down the machine that is actively surviving as a production host."

37 comments

  1. Questionable Choice of Host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm aware of NetBSD's mission to run on every possible platform, but using Mac OSX as a build system seems a little bit silly. The extreme costs of Apple computers make them poor choices for expedients such as this.

    I'd like to see a NetBSD live CD. I think it would be very fucking cool to see a toolchain developed entirely in Perl, then a CD with multiple NetBSD kernels and Perl for the many systems. A boot menu could let you select the platform. One live CD for every platform that NetBSD supports--cool.

    1. Re:Questionable Choice of Host by cyb97 · · Score: 4, Informative

      What difference does it make which platform the author choose to build FROM, the big thing here is that he's able to build to several platforms.

      Just to be nasty, you didn't really research your objections either did you? The first lines of the buildscript the author posted:
      crossbuild.sh Complete script for building tools, kernel and userland from another machine
      Tested :
      NetBSD/i386 -> NetBSD/macppc
      NetBSDS/macppc -> NetBSD/i386
      MacOSX 10.3.1 -> NetBSD/i386

      Notice the first line, it works using i386 too, so you could use i386 as a build system if you like.

      The point is it can be done, and it's usually easier to port or fix an existing idea or feature than to implement a whole new one.

    2. Re:Questionable Choice of Host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Hey, idiot mods. This is obviously a troll.

      extreme cost of Apple computers

      Wake up you cocksmokers.

    3. Re:Questionable Choice of Host by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      This is obviously flamebait. Oh wait, BSD fanatics don't believe in fair moderation, just smacking down anyone who dares to point out what a festering sore their favorite OS has become.
      Fact: *BSD is dying
    4. Re:Questionable Choice of Host by Rubel · · Score: 1

      It also means that instead of having a bunch of different autobuilder machines to maintain, you can just build every arch on one fast machine, with failure reports and fresh binaries ready for testers quickly and easily.

    5. Re:Questionable Choice of Host by cyb97 · · Score: 1

      Also saving you the cost of having an extra machine of every architechture in your serverpark to maintain.

  2. love this post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there are more troll posts and non-troll posts! this is why i like to read /. - greetz to the GNAA!

  3. It's cute, it's cool by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    But if you have enough money to have "production servers" then you have enough money to have a build system of the proper architecture. One PC with vmware on it can handle all your x86 operating systems (in most cases anyway) including running several at the same time. Or, you can multiboot, but that's a pretty wanky solution I think.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:It's cute, it's cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some environments *need* a central build host (ours uses a large Sun box) to fulfill process requirements that their OEM system is buildable by non-development staff for production.

      This functionality is most welcome and indeed very useful.

  4. Re:*BSD is dying by JamesTRexx · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I think just about all would go away if posting AC could be turned off in sections like these.

    --
    home
  5. Re:*BSD is dying by JDWTopGuy · · Score: 0, Troll

    Well.... I'm losing karma fast here, but some times the "BSD is dead" joke is funny (in context), and same for "Soviet Russia" jokes.

    On the rest I agree with you.

    --
    Ron Paul 2012
  6. BZBOYZ (off topic) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I had trouble with BZBOYS. I don't F*CK around. I knew these immigrants deserved the benefit of the doubt only until things got screwy. How can you expect people who barely understand the language to understand the law? You hope; you don't expect. Basically they tried the same thing with me, but I told them right-out that I would get what I ordered at the terms they originally accepted the order or nothing. I ordered a monitor from them, got nothing. They charged my Visa and the thing never shipped. I called back "I just want the hardware" and they took my info again and promised to ship it.

    I got charged twice, but I got one of the monitor I ordered. They wouldn't promise to credit me for the monitor they never shipped, so I invoked the "purchase protection" insurance policy on my Visa. I called the 800 number on the back of my card, and made my claim. I had to send Visa hardcopy of the Pricewatch ad, the email invoices they sent me, and all of the email correspondence.

    Two days later the same guy who was trying to hardball me was begging me to call off the credit card company. Whenever you make a claim against a vendor, if the issue gets past the first level of investigation it is a black mark on their credit record. The more they get, the more they have to pay for their Visa vendor account. Eventually the credit card companies will blacklist them.