Neil Williams wrote: > OK, this is a radical thought - one of those light bulb moments and the > light may actually be from an oncoming train but - why are we > cross-compiling binaries that are already available as native binaries? > > 1. Emdebian is Debian stripped-out - a smaller Debian for smaller > devices. > 2. Emdebian has always sought to use the best of Debian - we may be > missing a trick by *not* making the best use of one of Debian's most > powerful features: the buildd system. > 3. Emdebian is supporting the same architectures as Debian supports > upstream, just the devices are smaller. > 4. It's been staring us in the face since the creation of dpkg-cross. > > The idea is this: If we are proposing to cross-compile binaries that > already exist as native binaries in Debian, we had better have a *very* > good reason. I'm thinking that optimising binaries for size may not be > sufficient cause and may actually be making a rod for our own backs.
Rebuilding binaries allows for - optimimizing binaries for size, better use of (newer) instructions which aren't in the common generic set, use of (e.g. DSP-like) instruction set extensions - cutting down the dependency chain by disabling unused features - linking with smaller replacements (uClibc vs. glibc) I think the tradeoffs involved here don't allow a simple solution unless we choose not to support certain classes of systems. Thiemo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
