Thank you for your thorough reply, Gavin. Obviously I'm a bit of a noob
when it comes to this stuff, but that helps considerably.
-David
[ RhythmReloaded ]
www.rhythmreloaded.com
On Nov 21, 2007 6:30 PM, Gavin Lambert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quoth David van Geest:
> > Sort of a follow-up question: is there any advantage to compiling
> > your user apps with the kernel rather than compiling them
> > separately, transferring the binary, and running it? (and is
> > that known as a userland program then?)
>
> Well, you *don't* compile user apps with the kernel, technically -- if you
> did they wouldn't be user apps.
>
> The uClinux distribution has a unified makefile to combine multiple tasks
> together (specifically: building the kernel, building user libraries,
> building user apps, constructing a root filesystem, and creating a
> kernel/filesystem composite image). Any of these tasks can be run by
> themselves, although they do need to run in that order. You can skip
> ahead
> -- for example if you've made changes to user app code (without changing
> kernel or library code) then you can build the apps and recreate the
> filesystem by issuing "make user_only romfs image".
>
> Also, if you want to build some user apps out-of-tree, you might want to
> build all the standard stuff ("make" or "make linux_only lib_only
> user_only
> romfs"), then do your other out-of-tree activities, manually copy some
> files
> into the romfs directory, and then finally "make image" to create the
> composite image.
>
> You could even modify your vendor makefile (which is what is in charge of
> creating the kernel/FS image) to create separate images for kernel and
> root
> filesystem, so that the root FS can be updated independently of the kernel
> (and vice versa). Or to change the type of the root fs. It's quite
> likely
> that some existing vendor targets already do this.
>
> The main advantage of building the apps within the main distribution is
> that
> they will automatically be given the correct flags for cross-compiling,
> and
> with only minimal effort can copy themselves over to the romfs folder so
> they'll actually be copied to the target when the image is uploaded. If
> you
> build out-of-tree then you'll have to worry about those flags yourself.
> Also, any files not included in the root fs will disappear whenever the
> target is reset (unless it has some separate persistent storage), so
> that's
> one advantage of including them in the fs image, at least.
>
>
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