[OpenWrt-Devel] SDK enhancement proposal - add external toolchains via feeds

[Jeff Kletsky]

On 4/23/19 12:41 AM, Florian Eckert wrote:
> Hello Mirko,
>
> I am not a member of OpenWrt but this are my hints.
>
>>  To start this process, we have collected a small number of core
>> features that we would propose to add to the OpenWrt build system. Our
>> goal with these patches is to remove the need for companies to develop
>> external scripts used to manipulate the build configuration of
>> OpenWrt. We will present the use cases and our proposed way to
>> implement these in a series of emails.
>>
>>  If and when there is agreement on the proposal and implementation
>> approach, we will develop the feature and submit a patch for approval.
>> We are aware that this might take time and are prepared for several
>> iterations.
>
> Do not ask if this would be a good improvement.
> Just do it and make a traceable pullrequest with the changes.
> If the community likes this then it will get merged.
>
>
>>  The first use case we would like to present is the ability to add
>> external toolchains in a feed.
>
> Why not include the toolchain for new archs or changes to existing 
> into OpenWrt Upstream?
> This has a lot of advantages, which hopefully are all well known.
>
> [...]


Mirko,

First, I would echo Florian's suggestion as perhaps the most effective 
way to accomplish this.

(I'm not a member of the OpenWrt team either.)

I am, however, wondering how the existing features of the build system 
aren't meeting your needs. While I haven't tried them myself, it at 
least appears that there are many options available beneath

Symbol: EXTERNAL_TOOLCHAIN [=y]
   │ Type  : boolean
   │ Prompt: Use external toolchain
   │   Location:
   │     -> Advanced configuration options (for developers) (DEVEL [=y])
   │   Defined at toolchain/Config.in:41


On the feeds, at least as I understand it, `./scripts/feeds` looks at 
`feeds.conf` or, if not present, `feeds.conf.default` (Perl)

      44 sub parse_config() {
      45         my $line = 0;
      46         my %name;
      47
      48         open FEEDS, "feeds.conf" or
      49                 open FEEDS, "feeds.conf.default" or
      50                 die "Unable to open feeds configuration";

so that the choice of feeds is already part of the source itself, 
manageable through git or your VCS.


On a separate note, I wanted to thank the folks at Prpl for providing 
some documentation on procd that was once present at 
<http://wiki.prplfoundation.org/wiki/Procd_reference> I had linked to it 
at <https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/procd-init-scripts> some 
time ago, and replaced it with a link to the Internet Archive when the 
page disappeared. If that is present elsewhere, I know I'd appreciate it 
if we could know the URL to link to it directly, or maintain the 
information to the OpenWrt wiki directly.


Jeff




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