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Bug 318251

Summary: Guide is missing critical information on how to build a stage 1 for a new architecture
Product: [OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org Reporter: Alex Buell <alex.buell>
Component: Other documentsAssignee: Docs Team <docs-team>
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE    
Severity: normal CC: alexxy, bugs+gentoo, da_risk, embedded, pinkbyte
Priority: High    
Version: unspecified   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
URL: http://dev.gentoo.org/~vapier/PORTING-HOWTO
Whiteboard:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---
Attachments: porting-howto.xml

Description Alex Buell 2010-05-03 08:06:57 UTC
It would be nice if the Embedded guide included information on how to build a stage 1 for a new architecture, i.e what packages to cross compile, where to put them, creating a bootable environment, esp. if there are no stages available to use for that architecture, assuming the cross compiling toolchain is already available.

Reproducible: Always
Comment 2 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2010-05-05 21:34:54 UTC
this issue isnt specific to embedded
Comment 3 Alex Buell 2010-05-05 22:31:17 UTC
Thanks very much for the PORTING HOWTO, I'll find it very useful for porting!
Comment 4 nm (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2010-05-06 06:36:44 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> this issue isnt specific to embedded

It's not something the GDP plans to maintain though -- it seems perfectly suited to embedded.

Or did you want porting-howto GuideXMLified and put in /doc/en?
Comment 5 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2010-05-06 19:11:18 UTC
whether embedded arches could use this guide is irrelevant.  again, it is not specific to any arch.  when people want to port to the Alpha or IA64 or Sparc or any other typical server/semi-desktop arch, they would not go to the embedded project.  or if they wanted to port to an OS like FreeBSD or OpenSolaris or OpenBSD, they would not go to the embedded project.

this information should live under doc/.  my old PORTING-HOWTO should be guidexmlified and probably needs updating seeing as i slapped that together over four years ago.
Comment 6 Alex Buell 2010-05-06 21:33:20 UTC
I'd agree. I'm about to learn about porting to new archs and thought that the guide was one of the best places to start with but it is a bit out of date and there are no existing other distributions I can use to start the process. 

The list of things needed for a successful port needs to include things like ls, cp, mv, and ps etc.
Comment 7 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2010-05-07 20:15:56 UTC
we dont operate in terms of specific utilities.  for a basic system, you need to `emerge system` which is an alias for the important packages -- coreutils, procps, etc...
Comment 8 nm (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2010-06-07 08:52:56 UTC
Created attachment 234371 [details]
porting-howto.xml

Initial draft of porting-howto.xml.

Mike, please review this for accuracy. I tried to update it where I could (default-linux/ to default/linux/ for example), but you have a better sense of what's too old.

Also, to get the guide added, we really should have those scripts stored someplace besides a devspace, so that they don't get misplaced or deleted.
Comment 9 SpanKY gentoo-dev 2010-06-09 04:51:29 UTC
the profile stuff is out of date, and the catalyst should be reviewed to see if it needs updating.  i'll try and post an updated file to cover that.  otherwise the rest looks OK to me.

the bootstrap-portage code probably can be updated, but that's independent of the doc.
Comment 10 nm (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2011-03-02 09:56:21 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> the profile stuff is out of date, and the catalyst should be reviewed to see if
> it needs updating.  i'll try and post an updated file to cover that.  otherwise
> the rest looks OK to me.
> 
> the bootstrap-portage code probably can be updated, but that's independent of
> the doc.

Ping. What specifically needs doing?
Comment 11 Sven Vermeulen (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2013-07-23 14:30:54 UTC
I recommend putting this on the Gentoo wiki somewhere ;-)