Getting linaro toolchain binaries

[Dave Martin]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Michael Hope <michael.hope at linaro.org> wrote:
> (top posting as summarising)
>
> It's funny how things happen at the same time.  I've been asked a few
> times about how to compile Linaro GCC so I started this page a few
> days ago:
>  https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/ToolChain/Using
>
> The goal is to describe how to build the toolchain outputs such as GCC
> and GDB in common configurations such as native or cross.
>
> I see four classes of users:
>  1. Toolchain hackers who know how to build the product and start from source
>  2. Mid-level engineers who have experience with Unix tools and want
> to know how to build from source
>  3. Integrators who want a supported build script that automates
> everything but that they can customise
>  4. End users who just want a binary
>
> (1) is fine as they look after themselves.  (2) will be covered by the
> 'Using' pages.  (3) is along the lines of my cross-build[1] Makefile.
> (4) is in Marcin's queue[2], but there's no technical reason that
> Linaro couldn't use the scripts from Marcin or item 3 to do an
> official binary tarball that targets the Linaro evaluation builds.
> Note that we're not set up to support end users directly so having a
> product like ARM's DS-5 between the working group and end users would
> be good.
>
> This is all new, unplanned work.  I'm going to do (3) in the
> background and turn it into a product as it will save me time overall,
> but we should discuss 2, 3, and 4 for the next cycle.  Yves, can I
> suggest you bring this up at the next TSC meeting?

Sounds sensible.

For now, my only real concern was that we should document the absence
of a generic binary toolchain, and document the presence of the cross
compiler packages, so that people don't burn too many cycles searching
for something that isn't there.  A few words on
http://www.linaro.org/downloads/ and on
https://launchpad.net/linaro-toolchain might be enough.

Providing generic binary toolchain downloads (including, optionally, a
Windows-hosted build) is certainly nice-to-have; if we can accomodate
this in the next cycle it would be a bonus -- so it sounds like it's
worth discussing at the TSC.

Cheers
---Dave