Can someone explain me the Build Environment?

[redbrain]

Hello,

I'am new to this project and would like to now how the build environment works. Which components are involved and what needs to be done until I can deploy an rootfs image to my favorite ARM board? I already discovered crosstool-NG for the toolchain and read in the wiki the part about distributed cross compiling

I'am familar with yocto and buildroot but new to the Arch World and how everything glued together.

Best regards,

[graysky]

You're asking a few different questions in there... you deploy a rootfs simply by setting up the media and untarring the image as detailed on the device specific pages.

A build environment refers to minimally makepkg (included in the pacman package). If you want help compiling, use distcc on the ARM device and on an x86_64 machine (toolchain needed here) not on the ARM device.

See:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di ... _Linux_ARM
https://archlinuxarm.org/wiki/Distcc_Cross-Compiling
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg

[redbrain]

Ok. I summarize how I understood it. Please correct me if its wrong or incomplete.

I take a build master system which is it self a ARM system and I take some build clients which are ARM or x86_64 systems. I install on all of them Arch Linux and prepare them with distcc and the crostool-NG toolchain (only x86) (downloaded or as a self-build) and install base-devel group packages everywhere.

Then I need a bunch of PKGBUILD files which are need for a base system (first I'll take all of the core dir right?) and compile all of them with makepkg. Then I get a lot of tar.gz files. Do I get a RootFS image here automatically here or is there an extra step to create that image?

Then I prepare a SD-Card by putting a u-boot bootloader and a rootfs image with kernel on it. Hopefully my Hardware accept the u-boot und kernel configuration and everything boots up.

Is that the right way to go?

[graysky]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('redbrain', 'I') take a build master system which is it self a ARM system and I take some build clients which are ARM or x86_64 systems. I install on all of them Arch Linux and prepare them with distcc and the crostool-NG toolchain (only x86) (downloaded or as a self-build) and install base-devel group packages everywhere.

[redbrain]

I get soon a new board with i.mx8 (ARMv8-A 64-bit) which is not yet supported. So I thought that the first rootfs I need to build myself. If a binary works for me out-of the box there it will simplyfy it. But my experiences with yocto told me that at least I have to configure the u-boot and the kernel stuff and the build give me an image afterwards. So what are the steps in this scenario?

Best regards,

[redbrain]

So I got my first two ARM Boards booting. But I'am still confused how the Build Environment on your side works. I found out that these plugbuild repo exists for that. But there is no much documentation how to set a buildfarm up and how it interact with the Upstream sources and so on.

Is there any further documentation about your buildfarm and setting up Plugbuild from scratch?

Best regards,

redbrain

[WarheadsSE]

Outside of the main distribution, one should _never_ have to setup PlugBuild. It is not meant for from-scratch, as that would effectively have you creating your own distribution, entirely.

Arch Linux is designed as a binary repository distribution. This means that one normally builds upon the existing upstream packages, only supplying _new_ packages as supplementary.

Let me make this clear:

To add support for a new board, you need only 3 things:
$this->bbcode_list('1')

u-boot

kernel (if necessary!)

Written English script to:
$this->bbcode_list('a')

create disk partitions & format them

install u-boot / spl to medium

unpack kernel & rootfs into formatted paritions

[patrickfrance]

Hello,

I too am new to this project and would like to know how the building environment works. So thanks for your help..

[joyschwabach]

Well I' m here for the same..Hopefully someone will post an accurate solution here.

[TheSaint]

I'd suggest the admins to stick this discussion. Otherwise it might take somebody to write a wiki page