Hi all, Recently there was a discussion about using scratchbox to do the building for the mini-debian part of the emdebian project. (See http://lists.debian.org/debian-embedded/2004/debian-embedded-200401/msg00052.html for reference). Since I have now had the time to look into it I have a few remarks:
1. It's apparently a fine system (I should try it once) 2. Unfortunately it seems quite complex to set up (however with decent packages it should be less of a problem) 3. The major drawback is the need for a working (target)-board. This is not very very useful when doing development for a new platform, and some boards do not have the resources to run the whole environment Because of these reasons I would keep it for difficult and not to common software. Like for example X (with the mini-debian this could be used more often, but for the typical embedded application this is not commonly used). I would try to make as much workarounds as possible in the rules file (makefile for debian source package) as these work-around would remain valid for quite a while, and makes rebuilding by developer easier. Another idea I found quite good (ideaby Wookey) was to add an emdebian/rules instead of an debian/rules file adapted to emdebian in the standard debian packages. This way we could add patches which break one platform but are needed for the other, keep the complexity down of the original rules file, etc..
