Re: musl for ARM

[Brian Wang <brian.wang.0721@gmail.com>]

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On Oct 2, 2012 6:46 PM, "John Spencer" <maillist-musl@barfooze.de> wrote:
>
> On 10/02/2012 09:27 AM, Brian Wang wrote:
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I am currently thinking of switching to musl from glibc for my target
>> after some readings on musl.
>> I would like some advice from musl experts:
>>    * Does it support gettext stuff?
>
>
> musl has no libintl built-in, but i put together a replacement that is
capable of building all packages relying on the gettext tools:
> https://github.com/rofl0r/gettext-tiny
> at this point, all it does is echo the passed translation string back;
i.e. everything's english.
> however you can compile gnu gettext just fine, if you want to spend 40+
min on its compilation.
>

I do need a working gettext support.  I will definitely take a look at the
tiny gettext implementation.  Thank you for the info.

>
>>    * Does it _boost_ the performance on a 400MHz arm926 device?  Or it
>> is just smaller?
>>      By _boost_, I mean if the user can actually feel the improvement
>> in performance.
>
>
> it will definitely boost shell performance, in that it has a far lower
syscall overhead on startup. configure scripts run up to 4x as fast.
> also, memory usage will be much smaller. a booted up x86_64 sabotage
system takes ~2MB RAM, including kernel.

Cool.  The boost in the app startup time makes musl worth the try.

Does sabotage work as a cross development platform?

>
>
>> I did try the musl cross project and successfully built a musl-based
>> arm linux toolchain.
>> My kernel (2.6.24) was built successfully (not tried it on my device
yet).
>> However, when building busybox, there are some header files clashes,
>> resulting in conflicting types.
>> An example of it:
>> ---------------------
>> In file included from
>>
/opt/cross/arm-linux-musleabi/lib/gcc/arm-linux-musleabi/4.7.1/../../../../arm-linux-musleabi/include/linux/kd.h:3:0,
>>                   from console-tools/kbd_mode.c:23:
>>
/opt/cross/arm-linux-musleabi/lib/gcc/arm-linux-musleabi/4.7.1/../../../../arm-linux-musleabi/include/linux/types.h:12:26:
>> error: conflicting types for ‘fd_set’
>> In file included from
>>
/opt/cross/arm-linux-musleabi/lib/gcc/arm-linux-musleabi/4.7.1/../../../../arm-linux-musleabi/include/sys/time.h:9:0,
>>                   from include/libbb.h:45,
>>                   from console-tools/kbd_mode.c:22:
>>
/opt/cross/arm-linux-musleabi/lib/gcc/arm-linux-musleabi/4.7.1/../../../../arm-linux-musleabi/include/sys/select.h:25:3:
>> note: previous declaration of ‘fd_set’ was here
>> ---------------------
>>
>
> the problem here seems to be the inclusion of
>
> linux/types.h, not GCC-related headers.
>
> here's a busybox build recipe that's known to work with ARM (at least
with kernel 3.0+ headers):
>  https://github.com/rofl0r/sabotage/blob/master/pkg/busybox
>

I will try to play with it after my sleep.  It is midnight in Taiwan right
now. :-)

> there's also a prebuilt armv7l rootfs available on that site, check
README on the repo for info.
>
>
ok.  i will skip this since my device is only an armv5te box.

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