4 ms·
Long time embedded Linux developer here. This article exaggerates the undesirability of cross-compiling from x86 to ARM. It requires a bit of a conceptual shif
by jdblair 9y ago
Long time embedded Linux developer here.
This article exaggerates the undesirability of cross-compiling from x86 to ARM. It requires a bit of a conceptual shift, but once your toolchain is set up workflow is practically the same. Debugging is a bit trickier, but most issues can be sorted out on x86 before cross-compiling. It's definitely not like developing for Windows on a Mac.
There may be a compelling case for a PC that consumes less energy by using an ARM CPU, though peripherals like DDR RAM, SSD and video card will use the same energy regardless of CPU architecture.
- joezydeco 9y agoEmbedded Linux developer here as well. As much as I grind my teeth with Yocto, it does make the process of generating a usable toolchain much easier than it used to be. Which makes the rest of it easier. Up until a couple of years ago it was pretty much "grab what you can from CodeSourcery and cross your fingers".
- woodrowbarlow 9y agoi've found that: * if all you need is a toolchain, go with crosstool-ng. * if you want a toolchain and a bootable kernel with busybox and dropbear for a popular chipset, go with buildroot. * if you want buildroot plus flexibility in every direction (at the cost of configuration pain), go with yocto. * if you've outgrown even yocto, you're back to crosstool-ng and rolling your own build/bundle system.
- jdblair 9y agoFor my current project I'm pulling the cross compiler from Debian and the libraries from Debian:armel. This doesn't work for every project, but it sure is easy when it does. I sure don't miss the days of building my own compiler and carefully crafting my root filesystem, but I know I can always fall back on that if I have to.