Perl && uclibc

[ruoso]

Hi,

I've been working on a port of the Debian system to uclibc in the x86 architecture, with a great help from the guys of the emdebian project who built SLIND, which contains a cross toolchain and a base system for the uclibc-i386 architecture.

I'm now cross-compiling packages that are part of the build-essential packages of the Debian System, on which perl 5 takes part.

So, I know have a i486-linux-uclibc cross toolchain with libdb and libgdbm already cross compiled and available inside it. The problem is now cross-compiling perl from i486-linux-gnu (my machine) to i486-linux-uclibc (target arch). Ok, this is not exactly a cross compilation as they are subarches.

The problem is: how to tell the perl build system to cross-compile using the provided cross-toolchain?

[ioannis]

I did this several years ago for perl 5.6 . As in most cross-compilations, in the simple cases, you don't have to do anything because the gcc version of your tool chain should be already to default to the gcc used by your Makefile. Actually, compiling Perl was even simpler because the Perl distribution provided 'hint' files to set compilation defaults. I remember I had to compile in stages to overcome a difficulty with the blib package and deal with a few trial bumps. To directly answer you question; first, symlink your gcc to point to the correct gcc binary. If it does not work, play with the hint files that come with Perl. If it still does not work, then learn how to change your gcc flags to use the correct libraries, includes, and other cross-platform flags.

[ruoso]

which are this hint files?

[ioannis]

The hint files are in the hints directory. Debian has probably added their own hints to the list -- that is what they used to do.