[Clfs-dev] why there isn't any standard CLFS ARM Book?

[Andrew Bradford]

Hi Michele (and sorry if some on the list get two copies of this
reply, I mistakenly replied from the wrong account),

On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 8:31 AM Michele Bucca <michele.bucca at gmail.com> wrote:
> Il giorno mar 4 dic 2018 alle ore 14:00 Andrew Bradford
> <andrew at bradfordembedded.com> ha scritto:
> > On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 7:10 PM Michele Bucca <michele.bucca at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I was wondering why there wasn't a regular CLFS book for the ARM
> > > architecture. Yes, we have clfs-embedded but we don't have a regular
> > > CLFS Book. The only architectures supported are x86, x86_64, sparc,
> > > mips, but not ARM. Why?
> >
> > There's no normal CLFS book for ARM because no one has taken the time
> > to create it.  I assume that if you did add to the existing CLFS book
> > to add the ARM architecture and send patches that someone would review
> > the patches and apply them, although this may take some time as no
> > CLFS book developers are very active these days.  But maybe your
> > updates to add ARM to CLFS would spurn a new round of interest?  Who
> > knows?
> >
>
> What do I need to learn in order to edit the book? I could be
> interested in creating an ARM version or to help in my spare time

Clone the book sources from: http://git.clfs.org/?p=cross-lfs.git;a=summary

Then have a look at the file BOOK/INSTALL which explains what tools
you need to have on your system in order to render the book's XML into
HTML or PDF format.
Mostly you should be able to observe how other parts of the book are
assembled together, both from an XML point of view and from a makefile
point of view, so hopefully you can copy-paste to get started with
things.  The book is written in docbook and if you get stuck you can
probably google around fairly easily.

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to first create an ARM
variant of the book to render but just use the same exact input
sources as the x86 book but ensure that everything renders correctly
for all versions of the book.  Then, as you read this new version of
the book, create ARM variant pages where needed (like for the cross
compiler you'll need to create some ARM-specific pages and then if
certain packages need special configuration options).

> > If you're interested in it, give it a try.  In the worst case you'll
> > learn something new.
> >
> > > Nowadays there are a lot of ARM based Single Board Computers like the
> > > Raspberry Pi so I think that maybe the ARM community would benefit
> > > from a book like this.
> >
> > Possibly.  Although I'd argue that CLFS itself isn't that popular for
> > any of the architectures it supports in any of the book guises these
> > days.  Enough "normal" distributions support ARM systems now that
> > getting desktop/server operation isn't all that hard any more and for
> > more embedded and resource constrained systems there are many
> > semi/fully automated build systems which are widely used and have
> > decently sized developer communities around them.
> >
>
> CLFS may not be the fastest and easiest choice if you want to build an
> embedded system  that just works for your boar; it is an excellent
> resource for those who want to learn how to do it on their own. It's
> quite interesting to read. As a matter of fact I always have a browser
> tab open on the CLFS Book and CLFS-EMBEDDED.

Glad to hear you've learned something :)

Rob Landley (who's replied in this thread, too) has some rather easy
to understand scripts for automating a build process in his mkroot and
Aboriginal projects that would probably be a good reference for you,
too.

Thanks,
Andrew