From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11559 invoked by alias); 4 Oct 2012 07:33:10 -0000 Received: (qmail 11547 invoked by uid 22791); 4 Oct 2012 07:33:08 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.2 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,KHOP_THREADED,RCVD_IN_BRBL_LASTEXT,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_BL,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_L3,RCVD_IN_NJABL_RELAY,RP_MATCHES_RCVD X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from new.toad.com (HELO new.toad.com) (209.237.225.253) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:33:02 +0000 Received: from new.toad.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by new.toad.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id q947Wok7025038; Thu, 4 Oct 2012 00:32:50 -0700 Message-Id: <201210040732.q947Wok7025038@new.toad.com> To: Jan Kratochvil cc: Joel Brobecker , Doug Evans , Meador Inge , gdb@sourceware.org Subject: Re: Using Py_SetPythonHome In-reply-to: <20121003175343.GA14317@host2.jankratochvil.net> References: <20120917174611.GA27891@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20120919080410.GA12296@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20120921153645.GD5439@adacore.com> <20120921154345.GA30615@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20120921155758.GE5439@adacore.com> <20120921172735.GA4341@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20121002130854.GL30746@adacore.com> <20121003151244.GA22734@host2.jankratochvil.net> <20121003153854.GC13994@adacore.com> <20121003175343.GA14317@host2.jankratochvil.net> Comments: In-reply-to Jan Kratochvil message dated "Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:53:43 +0200." Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:33:00 -0000 From: John Gilmore X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2012-10/txt/msg00038.txt.bz2 Package management is a sinkhole, unfortunately. The OLPC project has unfortunately discovered that despite the great support in the GNU tools for cross-compilation, the Fedora package management tools are completely incapable of cross-compilation. So now that they are making hardware with three architectures to build software for (i386, i686, and ARM), they need to dedicate three kinds of hardware to building their Fedora-based releases. They can't make an OS image on a fast x86 machine that will install or boot on an ARM.(*) (I think Debian/Ubuntu package managers suffer from the same problem; they all assume they're running "native", they run package-specific shell scripts that think they're running in the target environment, etc.) I recommend NOT assuming that package managers are the cat's pajamas and that therefore we can all skip the ability to usefully build from source. Having seen this Py_SetPythonHome discussion drag on for what seems months (I think it's the most frequent subject line in the mailing list), and yet I still don't understand why y'all care, perhaps someone should try to write up a solid proposal that explains what the hell is going on, with pros and cons listed and generally agreed upon. That might help point a path to making a decision that sticks for a while. John (*): They can run builds under QEMU on x86, emulating the ARM instruction set, using a set of native ARM compilers and a full ARM GNU/Linux virtual machine, and make the ARM builds that way. Indeed they do -- it's only a 2- to 3-times slowdown, which is far easier than rewriting the package management subsystem for cross-compilation and then getting the changes adopted "upstream" into Fedora. And far, far easier than building fast hardware based on an available ARM chip.