Baslinux mailing list

[David Moberg <davidjmoberg AT gmail.com>]

sindi keesan wrote:

> I looked through a lot of old emails.  Do you mind if I link your BL
> download site to my site?  I know you have a varying set of files there.

I don't mind; that's what URLs are made for.

> -O4 optimizes for speed, right?  So  the only reason not to use it is if
> you want smaller executables?

Right.

> > It expands to more than 100M. But you also need room to unpack
> > whatever you are compiling.
>
> So this 21MB image gets mounted to loop and then copied to a large
> directory (or another partition) and includes uclibc library, gcc,
> binutils, bash, and busybox.  I presume after copying it to that directory
> I also copy the source code to that directory before I chroot there and
> then compile it and it ignores any other libc on the computer.

That is correct.

> >> I think you are overestimating my understanding of linux.
> >
> > Maybe, but I don't think there is much that can go wrong.
>
> Want to bet on it?  I will also need to either find precompiled, or
> compile from source code, various dependencies such as ncurses, or
> libjpeg, etc., or use ones compiled statically with glibc which I think
> would make them larger.  Where do I find precompiled libraries?

You'll have to compile them yourself. Or try some from the uClibc
port of Debian. The good news is that uClibc comes with curses
already, so you can start building links or lynx right away. X might
be a little trickier. I've found that there is just a handful of libraries
that are used by the various source code.

> I hope the instructions tell you how to compile statically or dynamically.

I compile the app. normally, and then I start X and chroot in from
an rxvt. Then remove the compiled application (before installation)
and run make again. Make will just go in and out of several
directories, then it will execute one command to rebuild the
deleted binary. Use X to copy and paste the command, then
add the '-static' command to rebuild it statically. Make sure
that you are in the right directory.

You can also usually do

LDFLAGS="-static" ./configure

or make LDFLAGS="-static" to do the same thing. There is
one notable exception: binutils, which requires "-all-static".

There is a learning curve, but it's a much easier one than
trying to get odd pieces of hardware like winmodems to
work with BL.

David