I'm getting better!

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

With the addition of "cross/{binutils,gcc}-mips-current" to pkgsrc-HEAD
and updates to the source tree, it should be possible to once again build
NetBSD/playstation2-6.99.39+ .  It'll be an interesting jump from 1.5ZA.

After some false starts, I've figured out a good bit of how to build with
an external toolchain.  The variable descriptions in "/usr/src/BUILDING"
are pretty good, but some examples would be useful.

So, in the "/etc/mk.conf" file on my build host (netbsd-5/i386), I put:

.if "${MACHINE}" == "playstation2"
EXTERNAL_TOOLCHAIN=     /usr/pkg
.endif

The mechanism that evaluates "EXTERNAL_TOOLCHAIN" assumes that the tools
reside in a "bin" subdirectory under the path value of the variable, so
one does not need to specify a longer path.

The cross tools are installed with names in the pattern:

  mips--netbsdelf-*

but the build system expects the tools to be named in the pattern:

  mipsel--netbsd-*

So I went into "/usr/pkg/bin" and created symlinks with the expected
names pointing to the corresponding tool.  This allowed the build to
proceed.

It stopped after some time due to not finding an expected header file.
The build host is current engaged with other tasks, but this is a step
forward again after years of neglect.

More later.

-- 
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