compiling xenv in Mandrake 6.1

[shapj@us.ibm.com]

Very glad to hear of the progress on this.  In case it helps, I remembered
something else over the weekend.  When building the xenv tree, you're
better off just typing make install from the outset.  'make all' will work
in any given subtree, but each subtree depends on the installation of the
previous subtree.

For example, this is probably why the use of 'ar' is failing.  The missing
directory actually does get created by the install step.

For the person who found the xenv configuration (linux host vs.
linux-cross) confusing, here is the situation:

On RedHat 5.2, the compiler versions that shipped all worked correctly. The
EROS build chain expects the ELF object file format, and it mostly works
fine with binary files as normally generated for Linux.

Unfortunately, when 6.0 came along, RedHat moved to the egcs toolchain,
which is badly broken. At that point, it became necessary to use a cross
build even under linux. This was a mixed blessing. On a positive note, it
means that everyone now uses the same toolchain, which eliminates one
source of errors and allows for future cross-builds to other architectures.
On the negative side, it means that everyone must now wrestle with the
cross-build issues.

The upshot is that linux-cross is actually the right setting to use.

Jonathan S. Shapiro, Ph. D.
Research Staff Member
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Email: shapj@us.ibm.com
Phone: +1 914 784 7085  (Tieline: 863)
Fax: +1 914 784 6576