RPMs for tools

[joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com (Joel Sherrill)]

As some of you know, I have been trying to build binaries
of the RTEMS tools.  With thanks to Ralf for emailing with 
me furiously to help iron out questions, I have had some
success.  I have hand built a set of RPMS for sparc-rtems
based on binutils 990901, gdb 4.18, gcc 2.95.1, and newlib 1.8.2.
I have a script running now which (if it does not fail) will
build more targets which I will also upload and announce.  
They can be found in 

ftp://www.oarcorp.com/private/arc_snapshots/linux_rpms

They are packaged as follows:

sparc-rtems-binutils-19991011-0.i386.rpm
sparc-rtems-gcc-newlib-19991011-0.i386.rpm
sparc-rtems-gdb-19991011-0.i386.rpm

I have divided it like this because (1) it makes the files
smaller, and (2) these components rev fairly independently.
These are dynamic binaries and install into /opt/rtems.  
Ralf has taken a stab at prepackaging some BSPs so that is
not that far off.  The division between RTEMS and BSP is 
not where we want it but the end packaging is OK.

NOTE: the gdb rpm includes a wrapper script for ddd. So that
works (or should) out of the box. :)

1.  Do these binaries work painlessly?  If there are dynamic library
problems, then we will have to move to static binaries or include
the missing libraries.

2.  The source rpm is a pain!!  We generate all targets from a
single source base.  This does not map onto rpm's --target argument
or the subpackage concept.  --target is concerned with multiple
Linux versions (sparc==>sparc-linux).  subpackaging the tools does
give a single shared source which is intended to build EVERY target!!
Not a good thing even for me since it takes too much disk space.
Right now, we have a simple RPM specification which produces a source
rpm for each binary RPM for a total of > 300 Mbytes of wasted space.

At the moment, I don't know what to do except focus on the binary
side of things.  Try them out.  I will be generating RPMs for all
popular targets.

If this works out, I would be happy to include more items in this.

I have provided the kit to regnerate the RPM. A
first cut at it is in the rpm_scripts.tgz file.

I know they are large but they are a huge improvement in ease of
use when you are getting started.  They are even easier for me to
deal with. :) 


-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel at OARcorp.com                 On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
   Support Available             (256) 722-9985