Hi,<div><br></div><div>I am Marc-Andre from the FreeRDP project, an open source RDP client. I want to work on optimizing FreeRDP for ARM using the NEON processor extensions.</div><div><br></div><div>The main computer is running Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit, while the target system is a pandaboard running Ubuntu 11.04 for ARM. I started looking into linaro because it aims at improving the current set of development tools for ARM, and I like where the project is going. Once I will have figured out how to get started, I will document the procedure specific to cross-compiling FreeRDP and redirect developers to it. It is my first time cross-compiling, so thank you for your understanding.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I have asked some questions on IRC, and read various pages from the wiki, but I haven&#39;t managed to successfully cross-compile FreeRDP yet. Compiling directly on the pandaboard works, but it is atrociously slow. I have made a chroot environment following and adapting the instructions from the following wiki page: <a href="https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/CrossCompile/UsingXdeb">https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/DevPlatform/CrossCompile/UsingXdeb</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>I took notes while setting up my chroot environment, such that I could use those notes later on for a wiki article:</div><div><br></div><div><div># bootstrap ubuntu natty</div><div>sudo debootstrap natty natty-armel</div>
<div><br></div><div># chroot to new environment</div><div>sudo chroot natty-armel</div><div><br></div><div># mount partitions</div><div>mount -t proc proc /proc</div><div>mount -t devpts none /dev/pts</div><div><br></div>
<div># export environment variables</div><div>export LC_ALL=C</div><div><br></div><div># append &quot;universe&quot; after &quot;main&quot; in sources.list</div><div>sed -i &#39;s/main/main universe/&#39; /etc/apt/sources.list</div>
<div><br></div><div># add source repository</div><div>sudo echo &quot;deb [arch=armel] <a href="http://ports.ubuntu.com/">http://ports.ubuntu.com/</a> natty main universe&quot; &gt;&gt; /etc/apt/sources.list</div><div><br>
</div><div># update and install packages</div><div>apt-get update</div><div>apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi xdeb</div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I have tried both xdeb and xapt, both causing problems. You can find the regular compilation procedure here:</div>
<div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><a href="http://www.freerdp.com/wiki/doku.php?id=compilation">http://www.freerdp.com/wiki/doku.php?id=compilation</a></div><div><br></div><div>Following the regular procedure, one can compile directly on the pandaboard, but it&#39;s very slow.</div>
<div><br></div><div>xapt:</div><div><br></div><div>I managed to fetch and convert packages with xapt, using the following command:</div><div>sudo xapt -a armel -k -b --suite natty --mirror <a href="http://ports.ubuntu.com/">http://ports.ubuntu.com/</a> libssl-dev libx11-dev libxv-dev libxkbfile-dev libxcursor-dev libasound2-dev libxcb1 libxcb1-dev libdirectfb-dev libc6 libc6-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev</div>
<div><br></div><div>The problem is then that xapt will fail to install the converted packages, saying the package architecture is different from the current architecture, as well as missing dependencies. I worked around the problem with this ugly hack:</div>
<div><br></div><div><div>cd /var/lib/xapt/output/</div><div>sudo dpkg -i --force-all *.deb</div></div><div><br></div><div>Following this, I could get the FreeRDP configure script to work, even though it would fail to detect X11 properly:</div>
<div><br></div><div>PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --host=arm-linux-gnueabi --with-neon</div><div><br></div><div>When trying to build after that, it will still fail to link in the end, complaining about missing libraries such as zlib, X11, crypto, etc. I tried installing various packages more with xapt, but I couldn&#39;t get it to work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>xdeb:</div><div><br></div><div>I tried the following:</div><div><div>root@workstation:/# xdeb -a armel --prefer-apt libssl-dev libx11-dev libxv-dev libxkbfile-dev libxcursor-dev libasound2-dev</div><div>
Building source package cache ...</div><div>Using file ports.ubuntu.com_dists_natty_main_source_Sources for apt cache</div><div>Using file ports.ubuntu.com_dists_natty_universe_source_Sources for apt cache</div><div>Using file archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_source_Sources for apt cache</div>
<div>Using file archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_universe_source_Sources for apt cache</div><div>Building working tree cache ...</div><div>No source package found: libssl-dev</div></div><div><br></div><div>Or, alternatively, the following:</div>
<div><div>root@workstation:/# xdeb -a armel --convert libssl-dev libx11-dev libxv-dev libxkbfile-dev libxcursor-dev libasound2-dev</div><div>Traceback (most recent call last):</div><div>  File &quot;/usr/bin/xdeb&quot;, line 849, in &lt;module&gt;</div>
<div>    main()</div><div>  File &quot;/usr/bin/xdeb&quot;, line 767, in main</div><div>    crossed_debs = cross_convert(options, args)</div><div>  File &quot;/usr/bin/xdeb&quot;, line 409, in cross_convert</div><div>    deb)).debcontrol()</div>
<div>  File &quot;/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/debian/debfile.py&quot;, line 208, in __init__</div><div>    ArFile.__init__(self, filename, mode, fileobj)</div><div>  File &quot;/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/debian/arfile.py&quot;, line 47, in __init__</div>
<div>    self.__index_archive()</div><div>  File &quot;/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/debian/arfile.py&quot;, line 52, in __index_archive</div><div>    fp = open(self.__fname, &quot;rb&quot;)</div><div>IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: &#39;./libssl-dev&#39;</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>Here is my sources.list file:</div><div><div>root@workstation:/# cat /etc/apt/sources.list</div><div>deb <a href="http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu">http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu</a> natty main universe</div>
<div>deb-src <a href="http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu">http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu</a> natty main universe</div><div>deb [arch=armel] <a href="http://ports.ubuntu.com/">http://ports.ubuntu.com/</a> natty main universe</div>
<div>deb-src [arch=armel] <a href="http://ports.ubuntu.com/">http://ports.ubuntu.com/</a> natty main universe</div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>I&#39;m stuck at this point. Can anybody point me towards possible solution paths on how to cross-compile FreeRDP for ARM, given the above information?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div>- Marc-Andre</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">