Note that you can now use the instructions at NativelyCompileUnslungPackages to natively packages directly from the Unslung CVS repository.

This page is my (TJ Yang) learning note about compiling packages natively on nslu2.

This page will retire and merge with other page when time is right.

This is a hack not a real solution.

The real solution is to modify unslung/Makefile to support both platform better without following hacks.

Bill of materials and procedures:

1. A NSLU2 box with Unslung 3.16 or 3.17 beta firmware.
2. A good network connection to the Internet.
3. Check out the package sources from NSLU2 CVS server.
4. Install the native gcc compiler for NSLU2. See NativeFloatingPointToolchain.
5. Modify unslung/Makefile for NSLU2 environment.
   1. Disable the crosstool build triggered by making other package.
      
      Example: you need do adjust the real absolute path to your own setting before running following two commands.These two command will let make skip the making of crosstool.
      
      touch /share/hdd/data/public/nslu2/tjyang/unslung/toolchain/crosstool/.configure
touch /share/hdd/data/public/nslu2/tjyang/unslung/toolchain/crosstool/.built
   2. Adjust the CROSS_TARGET variable to gcc installed at 4.
      
      Example:Modify TARGET_CROSS variable to point to the arm5b native compiler you downloaded and installed.
      
      TARGET_CROSS=/share/hdd/data/tools/gcc/bin/$(GNU_TARGET_NAME)-
   3. All the scripts in make/*.mk assumes that the shell is bash. This is ok when it run on a Linux workstation but Unslung's "sh" is "ash". for now, I cheated by linking sh to /opt/bin/bash.
   4. "chmod go+w /dev/null;chmod go+rw /tmp" to fix a wrong mode from Unslung firmware (both 3.16 and 3.17 beta)
   5. make sure ar and strip exists, they are missing from gcc-3.4.2-glibc-2.3.2 version of rene's gcc.
      
      cp /share/hdd/data/tools/gcc/armv5b-softfloat-linux/bin/strip /share/hdd/data/tools/gcc/bin/armv5b-softfloat-linux-strip
cp /share/hdd/data/tools/gcc/armv5b-softfloat-linux/bin/ar /share/hdd/data/tools/gcc/bin/armv5b-softfloat-linux-ar
6. Do a test make by "make zlib" and you should see zlib compilation and should not see crosstool compilation.
7. "ipkg -force-overwrite install bash" install bash.

T.J. Yang (tj_yang@hotmail.com)