Cross-compiling for ARM

[jmckendry at comcast.net (John McKendry)]

David Kramer wrote:
> 
> I'm working on a project with a few people, and we want to fool around with
> cross-compiling on Linux x86 (Red Hat 7.3 in my case) for the ARM
> architecture.  I'm supposed to be looking into the toolchain and HOWTO's.
> The problem is, I see a lot of conflicting/ambiguous/irrelevant
> documentation, and it's bumming me out.  
> <snip the sad details>
> 
> So I'm open to pointers, suggestions, and as always, ridicule.  Thanks in
> advance for any of these.
> 
 Have you seen the Linux-on-iPaq stuff at http://handhelds.org ? Older
iPaqs are ARM-based, although the newer ones are XScale-based. 
handhelds.org has pre-built toolchains and source for building your 
own. (The latest pre-built toolchain depends on gcc 3.3 on the
host machine, so probably won't run under your RH ). Not a
tremendous quantity of Howto-type documentation, but start at
http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/Toolchains . The whole handhelds.org project
is energized by the participation of HP's Cambridge Research Labs, which is
sponsoring a Handhelds Developer's Conference next Friday and Saturday,
and I see there's going to be a presentation on Friday about cross-compiling
tools : http://handhelds.org/z/wiki/CRLDevelopersWeekend and
http://www.handhelds.org/hdc.html - the latter has instructions on how to
register (no charge, but they need to give names to the security people). 

 I should admit that I haven't gotten the handhelds.org toolchain to work
due to the practical impossibility of upgrading from gcc 3.2 to 3.3 on
Mandrake 9.0, grumble grumble... I'm going to take a shot at building my own
according to the instructions at
http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/HOWTO%20Build%20a%20Cross%20Toolchain%20in%20Brief
 I'll let you know how that goes if you're interested. Looks simple but tedious.

HTH,
John