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List:       gentoo-dev
Subject:    [gentoo-dev] RFC: method of checking for cross compilation from ebuild functions
From:       Ambroz Bizjak <ambrop7 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2012-09-22 16:48:23
Message-ID: CAOA3yKJ1LtZwb75uMdcNUN4N2H5vA5m2CvnBXRWEBbr4rsiPtg () mail ! gmail ! com
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Zac, I think you misunderstood me here. Crosscompile-only HDEPEND is
definitely necessary, I've seen many packages need this. But what I'm
suggesting is that we also, and maybe only, need "ROOT != /" - only
HDEPEND dependencies. This means that the dependency would only be
required if the package is being built for a ROOT that is not /. The
idea is to eliminate the strange case that is ROOT!=/ but FEATURES has
no crosscompile. If the package requires tools that it would build
itself if ROOT was /, it will use the host's version of the tool
whenever ROOT!=/  It wouldn't have to worry about whether the tools it
builds link to libraries in ROOT.

So my proposal is basically, instead of:
HDEPEND="crosscompile? ( ~${CATEGORY}/${P} )    (yes, that seems to be
the most common case)

there would also, and maybe only, be:
HDEPEND="root_not_slash? ( ~${CATEGORY}/${P} )"

root_not_slash (or another name) would essentially be a superset of
crosscompile, since crosscompile implies ROOT!=/.

P.S. sorry Zac I sent you this twice, damn GMail :)

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Zac Medico <zmedico@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 09/22/2012 09:08 AM, Ambroz Bizjak wrote:
>> Yes, I think this is a good idea, it would allow the dependencies to
>> be expressed nicely as conditions.
>>
>> But I'm not sure how this would be a USE flag. It should behave like
>> one during the build, but it would be best if it was not written into
>> the VDB as such, at least in a way that would be considered by
>> --newuse. It don't want "emerge -unD" on the booted system want to
>> reinstall all packages because the current ones were cross-compiled.
>> Does the test flag already behave nicely like that? In that case, all
>> is good, and I can try to implement this.
>
> Simply add your special flag to the _feature_flags variable in
> config.py, and it will be exempt from --newuse. See this commit:
>
> http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=proj/portage.git;a=commit;h=6b19f71b39b6af43307abf20654511bace041217
>
>> On a slightly different subject: I've been porting some packages to
>> HDEPEND and I've seen problems with packages that want to use the
>> programs they build during the build (or in postinst). Of couse this
>> works for native builds, and it can be fixed to work for cross-compile
>> builds (build native version or HDEPEND on host package).
>>
>> But what do we do with the strange case where ROOT!=/ but
>> --crosscompile/FEATURES=crosscompile is not in affect? Can we expect
>> that we will be able to run the programs that were built? What if they
>> link to libraries only available in ROOT?
>>
>> So, I think it would make sense for a lot of packages to treat ROOT!=/
>> equivalently to cross-compilation, i.e. require host tool to be
>> present. But with what has currently been proposed there is no
>> conditional dependency on ROOT!=/, so a package cannot demand that a
>> tool be present on the host. Then, it may be a good idea to add a
>> conditional dependency on ROOT!=/.
>
> If I understand correctly, that would be like a CROSS_TDEPEND? If we
> translate that to a conditional, it would become DEPEND="crosscompile? (
> foo )", since our plan was to make DEPEND apply to ROOT!=/ and HDEPEND
> apply to ROOT=/, right?
>
>> In fact, I think that --crosscompile or FEATURES=crosscompile could
>> actually be abolished and only this condition would be available. It's
>> true that some packages would only use the host dependency if there's
>> actual cross-compilation going on, but nothing will break. This would
>> ease configuration and reduce the number of cases to be tested.
>
> Yeah, the split between HDEPEND and DEPEND might be enough so that you
> don't need these conditionals. If you're not really sure that the
> conditionals are needed, then maybe it's better to eliminate them for now.
> --
> Thanks,
> Zac

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