[Clfs-dev] Some thoughts on embedded

[michiegan at eircom.net]

I was very interested to see the new embedded book, as I currently code for GP2X and have recently learned that Linux can be shoe-horned into a Sega Dreamcast.

I was quickly disappointed to see the initial build-plans. Having studied and played with embedded platforms a bit, I'd like to make a few points:

1: The cross-compile toolchain should be built and kept on the host system, not built into a root partition to be discarded. When developing for an embedded device, you need to keep your toolchain around for further building.

2: The root filesystem doesn't need to be on a seperate partition, since it can't run on the host system anyway. If the embedded platform supports it, it's quite convenient  to mount the root file system via NFS on your host, allowing easy modifications and testing. Fetching the kernel using tftp simplifies things even more. But even if these options aren't available, it's a simple matter to copy the root filesystem from a directory to the boot medium for your platform.

3: Using separate login's for each toolchain type with proper environment settings help simplify the development process even more. You can su - dreamcast, su - gp2x, su - wrt, etc and then simply build from that login.

Having said all that, I look forward to seeing the embedded book develop and hope that I can contribute meaningfully. I'd like to see dreamcast and GP2X added. I've built a bit of stuff for the GP2X and I've been playing with dreamcast, but nothing working there yet.

Cheers,

    John Gay

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