Re: RFC: distbb for cross-compiling packages

[Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost>]

> First,  I am using

>   host: the host on which we are doing cross
>   target: the host we are building to

> but maybe we should be using autoconf terminology

>   build: the system we are building on
>   host: the system we are building for
>   target: the system the compiler we are canadian cross building
>     compiles to

I'm familiar with autotools terminology and avoided using it explicitely
because I think the word "host" says nothing.  This is why used
"build platform" (platform of the system where we build the software
using cross-tools) and
"target platform" (platform we build the software for).
If you think host/target is better I'm fine with it. No problem.

> I skimmed your message and while thinking about it away from the
> computer came to the conclusion that:

>   USE_TOOLS is about host dependencies
True.

>   BUILD_DEPENDS should be about target, and is really a weak case of bl3
I think in most cases BUILD_DEPENDS are build host dependencies too.
I could not find cases where BUILD_DEPENDS is set manually in package's
Makefile and contains target-platform dependency.
bl3 is a pure target-platform only dependency.

If we stay with BUILD_DEPENDS as a list of host dependencies
and introduce TARGET_BUILD_DEPENDS
for bl3 (BUILDLINK_DEPMETHOD.xxx = build),
it will be easier to manually convert BUILD_DEPENDS to
TARGET_BUILD_DEPENDS in packages's Makefile when necessary.

>   HOST_BUILD_DEPENDS is a special case of things that should be USE_TOOLS.
They cannot. Otherwise our USE_TOOLS will have to support thousands of programs.

> On rereading I don't follow your BH/th labels; they seem exactly
> backwards.
BH -- build-host dependency
th -- target-host dependency.

> Sorry if I'm being foggy here.

-- 
Best regards, Aleksey Cheusov.