Notes on building crosstool compilers and crocodile packages for powerpc (PPC) using scratchbox

Since I've been recently coming up the learning curve, I
thought to copy 
some of my notes here in the hope that they might help some
people.  
This covers building your own foreign toolchain and then
install that in 
scratchbox to build crocodile packages for powerpc.

Here are some notes.  I was working on two different
toolchains (ppc603 
and ppc860), so I refer to both interchangably.  There may
be some 
omissions or errors, it's a work in progress.  There are two
patches 
that were needed to build the crocodile packages for
powerpc, one for 
procps and one for zlib.

-Jim Heck

**0. Starting with a vanilla Ubuntu 6.10 installation.  I
tried this 
because I had problems installing scratchbox 1.0.6 on Debian
(turns out 
Debian was fine, as I was able to install on my laptop
running Debian).  
The installation hung in the stage where it was running the
preinstall 
scripts for the packages.  This may have had something to do
with 
autofs, since the installation creates an sbox user.  I
confirmed that 
scratchbox installs on Debian if autofs is not used.

**1. Installed scratchbox-core (1.0.7).  This pulled in
scratchbox-libs 
(1.0.7).  Ultimately I ended up installing the following
scratchbox 
packages.

--------------------------------------
jheckubuntu-cross:/scratchbox/users/jheck/home/jheck/croco
dile/patches$ 
dpkg -l |grep scratchbox
ii  scratchbox-core                            
1.0.7                         Scratchbox base system
ii  scratchbox-devkit-cputransp                
1.0.1                         CPU transparency methods
ii  scratchbox-devkit-debian                   
1.0.6                         Debian tools for Scratchbox
ii  scratchbox-devkit-doctools                 
1.0.5                         Doctools for Scratchbox
ii  scratchbox-devkit-perl                     
1.0.4                         Perl modules for Scratchbox
ii  scratchbox-libs                            
1.0.7                         Scratchbox libraries
ii  scratchbox-toolchain-arm-linux-ct401-2.3   
1.0.4                         arm-linux-ct401-2.3 compiler
for Scratchbox
ii  scratchbox-toolchain-host-gcc              
1.0.7                         Scratchbox host-gcc toolchain
ii  scratchbox-toolchain-i686-gcc3.3-glibc2.3  
1.0.3                         i686-linux-gcc3.3-glibc2.3
compiler for Scra

**2. Decided to start by trying to install a foreign
toolchain (see 
1). 
To prepare for this, I built a few toolchains using
crosstool 0.42 
from Dan Kegel (see 2).

See the following web pages:

1 http
://www.scratchbox.org/wiki/ForeignToolchains
- overview of foreign toolchains for scratchbox

2 http://kegel.com/crosstoo
l/
- overview of crosstool

3 
http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.42/buildlogs/
- summary of working crosstool combinations

4 http://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.42/doc/
crosstool-howto.html
- crosstool step by step howto

**2.1 Used a supported combination of glibc and gcc under
crosstool 0.42 
to make a compiler.  I built this as user jheck under
/home/jheck and 
targeted /opt/crosstool/ for the built compiler

- gcc-3.4.5
- glibc-2.3.6

**2.2 Here is a cat of the configuration file used 
/home/jheck/crosstool-0.42/demo-ppc603.sh

--------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
set -ex
TARBALLS_DIR=$HOME/downloads
RESULT_TOP=/opt/crosstool
export TARBALLS_DIR RESULT_TOP
GCC_LANGUAGES="c,c++"
export GCC_LANGUAGES

# Really, you should do the mkdir before running this,
# and chown /opt/crosstool to yourself so you don't need to
run as root.
mkdir -p $RESULT_TOP

# Build the toolchain.  Takes a couple hours and a couple
gigabytes.
#eval `cat powerpc-603.dat gcc-3.4.0-glibc-2.3.2.dat` sh
all.sh 
--builduserland --notest
# eval `cat powerpc-603.dat gcc-3.4.1-glibc-2.3.3.dat`  sh
all.sh --notest
#eval `cat powerpc-603.dat gcc-3.4.1-glibc-20040827.dat` sh
all.sh --notest
eval `cat powerpc-603.dat gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6.dat`  sh
all.sh --notest
#eval `cat powerpc-603.dat gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6.dat`  sh
all.sh 
--nounpack --notest

echo Done.
--------------------------------------

**2.3 Had the following problems compliling the toolchain

- libc6-dev was not installed by Ubuntu by default and had
to be added
- /bin/sh was linked to the /bin/dash shell and that caused
problems.  
Solved by changing it to link to /bin/bash.

**2.4 Resulting toolchain was functional, but had a
dependence on the 
host glibc, which was version 2.4 based.  This toolchain
would not work 
in scratchbox, since scratchbox only includes a 2.3 based
version of 
glibc for the host crosscompiler to use.  The fix for this
was to 
compile the crosstool toolchain under scratchbox (see 3.)

**3. Rebuilt the crosstool 0.42 toolchain under scratchbox. 
The steps 
are outlined below.  Basically I built in my home directory
targeting 
/opt/crosstool. 

NOTE: This must NOT be done using the scratchbox HOST
sandbox, since 
doing so will result in a compiler with a ld that does not
look for 
library dependencies in /usr/lib.  Instead you must use a
scratchbox x86 
toolchain.  I was not able to find or build one using the
latest Apophis 
r4 version, so I went back and grabbed a toolchain from
Apophis r3 
(scratchbox-toolchain-i686-gcc3.3-glibc2.3_1.0.3_i386.deb). 
I made a 
sandbox using this toolchain and the debian devkit, and
compiled the 
crosstool toolchain.

See the following web pages:
http://scratchbox.org/download/files/
sbox-releases/branches/apophis/r3/deb/

--------------------------------------
as user jheck

$ /scratchbox/login
[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >export
http_proxy=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxxxx
[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >export
ftp_proxy=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxxxx
- to get past the firewall, setup proxies so other tools can
work

[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >wget http
://kegel.com/crosstool/crosstool-0.42.tar.gz
[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >tar xvzf crosstool-0.42.tar.gz
[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >cd crosstool-0.42
- get the croostool tarball

[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >cp demo-ppc604.sh demo-ppc603.sh
[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >vi demo-ppc603.sh
- setup the master 'demo' script to build
glibc-2.3.6/gcc-3.4.5 toolchain
- see 2.2 above for contents of demo-ppc603.sh

[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
- LD_LIBRARY_PATH cannot be set during compile, and
scratchbox has it 
set, so unset it

[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >ln -sf /scratchbox/tools/bin/bash
/bin/sh
- fixinc.sh in 
/home/jheck/crosstool-0.42/build/powerpc-603-linux-gnu/gcc-3
.4.5-glibc-2.3.6/build-gcc-core/gcc 
needs a link to sh in /bin, so create one

[sbox-ct-compile: ~] >sh demo-ppc603.sh 2>&1 |tee
../ppc603.log
- invoke the crosstool build script, and wait

**4. Built the scratchbox sb-toolchain-extras set of tools,
to allow the 
toolchain to be integrated into the scratchbox environment.

NOTE: One thing to remember here is that the toolchain has
compiled into 
it, absolute paths to find its libraries and includes 
(/opt/crosstool/gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6/powerpc-860-linux-gnu/
powerpc-860-linux-gnu/lib 
and .../include).  The scratchbox environment installs the
toolchain in 
such a way that the necessary files for the compiler are
copied to well 
known locations under /usr/lib and /usr/include.  This is
how the 
compiler will find them.  A caveat to note is that this
process will 
work only only for toolchains that don't mess with the
structure of the 
lib and include directories.  Notably, I had a problem with
the 
powerpc-860 compiler, which doesn't have a floating point
unit.  In this 
case, a few static libraries (e.g. the libstdc++.a) were
located in a 
subdirectory under the /lib directory (/lib/nof).  This
caused crosstool 
confusion when building the sb-toolchain-extras.  I had to
manually copy 
the static libraries up into the /lib directory of the built
compiler 
tree so that the crosstool build/scripts could find them. 
Thus the use 
of the "standard" path metod crosstool employes is
a bit scary, since it 
cannot know exactly how the compiler is setup, and thus we
must be 
certain the compiler is working properly in the scratchbox
environment.

--------------------------------------
as user jheck logged into scratchbox

[sbox-HOST: ~] >cd /opt/crosstool/gcc-3.4.5-glibc-2.3.6
[sbox-HOST: ~] >tar cvpzf powerpc-603-linux-gnu.gz
powerpc-603-linux-gnu
[sbox-HOST: ~] >cp powerpc-603-linux-gnu.gz
/scratchbox/compilers/.
[sbox-HOST: ~] >cd /scratchbox/compilers/
[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers] >tar xvzf
powerpc-603-linux-gnu.gz
[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers] >cd
- tar up the toolchain and untar it in the
/scratchbox/compilers directory

[sbox-HOST: ~] >cd
/scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu
[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu]
>rm -rf distributed
- get rid of the distributed gcc compiler because it
confuses the python 
script for the toolchain-extras

[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu]
>cd 
powerpc-860-linux-gnu/lib/nof
[sbox-HOST: 
/scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu/powerpc-860-linu
x-gnu/lib/nof] 
 >cp *.a ../.
[sbox-HOST: 
/scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu/powerpc-860-linu
x-gnu/lib/nof] 
 >cd
- copy the static .a libraries up to the lib directory so
they can be 
found when building toolchain-extras

[sbox-HOST: ~] >darcs get --set-scripts-executable 
h
ttp://scratchbox.org/repos/1.0/sb-toolchain-extras
- get the darcs repository with the scratchbox toolchain
extras

[sbox-HOST: ~] >cd
/scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu
[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu] 
 >~/sb-toolchain-extras/confhelper/create_toolchain_conf.
py > 
~/sb-toolchain-extras/meta/alien-tc/powerpc-860-linux-gnu.co
nf
- create the conf file to build the alien toolchain

[sbox-HOST: /scratchbox/compilers/powerpc-860-linux-gnu]
>cd 
~/sb-toolchain-extras/
[sbox-HOST: ~/sb-toolchain-extras] >make 
CONFIG=meta/alien-tc/powerpc-860-linux-gnu.conf -C
meta/alien-tc all-sums
[sbox-HOST: ~/sb-toolchain-extras] >make 
CONFIG=meta/alien-tc/powerpc-860-linux-gnu.conf -C
meta/alien-tc
- make the alien toolchain (first the checksums and then the
toolchain 
itself)

[sbox-HOST: ~/sb-toolchain-extras] >cd
[sbox-HOST: ~] >sb-menu
- make a sandbox using the new foreign toolchain

**5. Build the crocodile set of packages.  These are debian
sarge 
packages necessary to bootstrap a system.

NOTE: Crocodile is based off the sarge debian distribution. 
For the 
most part, it builds all the libraries that the
build-essential set of 
packages depends on.  It does leverage a bunch of tools from
the 
scratchbox environment, such as those associated with the
compiler, and 
some such as autoconf, debmake, flex, etc.  It proceeds in a
brute force 
fashion making multiple passes trying to compile all source
packages in 
a repository until no progress has been made over two
passes.

See the following web pages:
 http://www.s
cratchbox.org/wiki/Crocodile
 http://www.
scratchbox.org/wiki/Apophis-r4
 h
ttp://www.scratchbox.org/wiki/EnvironmentVariables

--------------------------------------
as user jheck

**5.1. From Scratchbox 1.0.7 on, flex is not regarded as a
provided 
package when checking debian build deps.  This is fixed with
the 
following, performed inside scratchbox.

# mkdir /scratchbox/users/$/targets/`sb-conf
cu`_deb_list
# cat > /scratchbox/users/$/targets/`sb-conf
cu`_deb_list/flex << EOF
Source: flex
Version: 2.5.31
Binary: flex
EOF

**5.2. For powerpc, the value scratchbox returns for 'uname
-m' is 
'powerpc'.  This causes problems when building packages,
since the 
scripts/makefiles generally expect 'ppc'.  This is fixed by
setting the 
'SBOX_UNAME_MACHINE' environment variable to 'ppc'

[sbox-ppc603-croc: ~] > export SBOX_UNAME_MACHINE=ppc

**5.3. Two packages required patches over and above the ones
scratchbox 
had already provided.  These were procps and zlib.  The
patches go in 
crocodile/patches

- procps required a patch to remove dependence on a header
file 
/include/asm/page.h.  The use of a macro for PAGE_SIZE
resolved to a 
function and was being improperly used in a variable
declaration.  I 
took code from the latest version of the package to patch it
in the 
sarge version.

cat of procps.patch
--------------------------------------
diff -Naur procps-3.2.1/proc/devname.c
procps-3.2.1-patched/proc/devname.c
--- procps-3.2.1/proc/devname.c 2004-03-17
13:43:50.000000000 -0500
+++ procps-3.2.1-patched/proc/devname.c 2006-12-13
11:38:10.366938000 -0500
 -19,10
+19,10 
 #include "version.h"
 #include "devname.h"

-#include <asm/page.h>
-#ifndef PAGE_SIZE
-#define PAGE_SIZE (sizeof(long)*1024)
-#endif
+// This is the buffer size for a tty name. Any path is
legal,
+// which makes PAGE_SIZE appropriate (see kernel source),
but
+// that is only 99% portable and utmp only holds 32 anyway.
+#define TTY_NAME_SIZE 128

 /* Who uses what:
  *
 -216,7
+216,7 
   char path[32];
   int count;
   sprintf(path, "/proc/%d/%s", pid, name);  /*
often permission denied */
-  count = readlink(path,buf,PAGE_SIZE-1);
+  count = readlink(path,buf,TTY_NAME_SIZE-1);
   if(count == -1) return 0;
   buf[count] = '';
   if(stat(buf, &sbuf) < 0) return 0;
 -227,7
+227,7 

 /* number --> name */
 unsigned dev_to_tty(char *restrict ret, unsigned chop,
dev_t dev_t_dev, 
int pid, unsigned int flags) {
-  static char buf[PAGE_SIZE];
+  static char buf[TTY_NAME_SIZE];
   char *restrict tmp = buf;
   unsigned dev = dev_t_dev;
   unsigned i = 0;
--------------------------------------

- zlib attempted to create the compiler name for the CC
environment 
variable using 'dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE'. 
This resolved 
the gcc tool name to 'powerpc-linux-gnu-gcc', but scratchbox
for some 
reason has the gcc compiler linked to 'powerpc-linux-gcc'. 
The fix was 
to patch the rules file for the sarge package using code
from the latest 
version, which invokes the compiler using the environment
variable CC, 
which make maps to cc, instead of trying to build up the
tool name directly.

cat of zlib.patch
--------------------------------------
diff -Naur zlib-1.2.2/debian/rules
zlib-1.2.2-patched/debian/rules
--- zlib-1.2.2/debian/rules     2006-12-13
17:13:17.807465000 -0500
+++ zlib-1.2.2-patched/debian/rules     2006-12-13
17:27:35.457286000 -0500
 -12,13
+12,20 
 DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM := $(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM)
 DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU)-$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_SYS
TEM)
 DEB_HOST_ARCH=$(shell dpkg-architecture -qDEB_HOST_ARCH)
-DEB_HOST_GNU_CPU=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_BUILD_GNU_CPU)
-DEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_BUILD_GNU_SYSTEM)
-DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE)
+DEB_HOST_GNU_CPU=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_HOST_GNU_CPU)
+DEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_HOST_GNU_SYSTEM)
+DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE=$(shell dpkg-architecture
-qDEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)
 DH_OPTIONS=

 ifeq ($(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE),$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE))
 TESTS=test
+CC=gcc
+CC32=gcc -m32
+CC64=gcc -m64
+else
+CC=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc
+CC32=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc -m32
+CC64=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc -m64
 endif

 COMPAT-ARCHS=
 -58,14
+65,14 
 build: $(STAMP_DIR)/build
 $(STAMP_DIR)/build: $(STAMP_DIR)/source.make
$(DOBUILDCOMPAT)
        dh_testdir
-       cd $(BUILD_TREE) &&
CC=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc CFLAGS="-O3 -g 
-D_REENTRANT -fPIC" ./configure --shared
+       cd $(BUILD_TREE) && CC=$(CC)
CFLAGS="-O3 -g -D_REENTRANT -fPIC" 
./configure --shared
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) all libz.a $(TESTS)
-       $(MAKE) CC=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc -C
$(BUILD_TREE)/contrib/minizip
+       $(MAKE) CC=$(CC) -C $(BUILD_TREE)/contrib/minizip
        touch $

 $(STAMP_DIR)/build-64: $(STAMP_DIR)/source.make
        dh_testdir
-       cd $(BUILD_TREE) &&
CC="$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc -m64" 
CFLAGS="-O3 -g -D_REENTRANT -fPIC" ./configure
--shared
+       cd $(BUILD_TREE) && CC="$(CC64)"
CFLAGS="-O3 -g -D_REENTRANT 
-fPIC" ./configure --shared
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) clean
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) all libz.a $(TESTS)
        touch $
 -73,7
+80,7 
 $(STAMP_DIR)/build-nopic: $(STAMP_DIR)/source.make
        dh_testdir
        mkdir -p debian/nopic-tmp
-       cd $(BUILD_TREE) &&
CC=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc CFLAGS="-O3 
-D_REENTRANT" ./configure
+       cd $(BUILD_TREE) && CC=$(CC)
CFLAGS="-O3 -D_REENTRANT" ./configure
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) clean
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) all libz.a $(TESTS)
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) install
prefix=$(CURDIR)/debian/nopic-tmp
 -84,7
+91,7 
 $(STAMP_DIR)/build-64-nopic: $(STAMP_DIR)/source.make
        dh_testdir
        mkdir -p debian/nopic-tmp
-       cd $(BUILD_TREE) &&
CC="$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE)-gcc -m64" 
CFLAGS="-O3 -D_REENTRANT" ./configure
--libdir=$$/lib64
+       cd $(BUILD_TREE) && CC="$(CC64)"
CFLAGS="-O3 -D_REENTRANT" 
./configure --libdir=$$/lib64
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) clean
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) all libz.a $(TESTS)
        $(MAKE) -C $(BUILD_TREE) install
prefix=$(CURDIR)/debian/nopic-tmp
--------------------------------------

**5.5. Create a cross compile scratchbox using sb-menu.  C

- choose the powerpc-xxx-linux-gnu compiler.
- add the 'cputransp', 'doctools', 'debian' and 'perl'
devkits
- select 'qemu-ppc-0.8.1-sb2' CPU-transparancy emulation
- no rootstrap
- add 'C-library', '/etc', 'Devkits' and 'fakeroot' files to
the target
- then patch as described above in 5.1-5.3
- don't forget to set proxies if necessary for http 'export 
http_proxy=
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxxxx'
- create a sources.list file containing an appropriate sarge
mirror for 
sources.  I used 'deb-src http://mirrors.ir
cam.fr/pub/debian/ sarge main'
- follow the instructions described at 
http://www.s
cratchbox.org/wiki/Crocodile
Once the new sandbox has been created

[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >export ftp_proxy=
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxxxx
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >export ftp_proxy=
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxxxxx
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >darcs get --set-scripts-executable

http://scratchb
ox.org/repos/crocodile
- get the crocodile files

[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >echo 'deb-src http://mirrors.ir
cam.fr/pub/debian/ 
sarge main' > /etc/apt/sources.list
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >apt-get update
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >mkdir crocodile-packages
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~] >cd crocodile-packages
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile-packages] >apt-get source
-d acl attr 
base-files base-passwd bash bc bzip2 chrpath coreutils cpio
cracklib2 
db1-compat db3 db4.2 debianutils diffutils dpkg e2fsprogs
findutils 
fribidi gdbm grep gzip hostname libcap libselinux libsepol
makedev mawk 
modutils ncurses netbase pam perl procps readline4 sed
shadow slang 
sysvinit tar tcl8.3 tcl8.4 util-linux zlib
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile-packages]
>dpkg-scansources . 
/dev/null|gzip>Sources.gz
- get source packages to build

[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >cd ../crocodile
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >echo "deb-src 
file:/home/$/crocodile-packages ./" >
etc/sources.list
- setup sources.list so only the downloaded packages get
built

[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >export
SBOX_UNAME_MACHINE=ppc
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >mkdir 
/scratchbox/users/$/targets/`sb-conf cu`_deb_list
[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >cat > 
/scratchbox/users/$/targets/`sb-conf cu`_deb_list/flex
<< EOF
Source: flex
Version: 2.5.31
Binary: flex
EOF
- Setup as described in 5.1-5.2 to do the build

[sbox-ppc860-croc: ~/crocodile] >./unplanned-build.sh
--clean
- Build the crocodile packages

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Notes on building crosstool compilers and crocodile packages for powerpc (PPC) using scratchbox

Thread: Notes on building crosstool compilers and crocodile packages for powerpc (PPC) using scratchbox