Re: [gentoo-dev] Use --with-sysroot configure switch when cross-compiling

[James Le Cuirot]

On Sun, 6 Nov 2016 11:19:02 +0100
Gerhard Bräunlich <wippbox@×××.net> wrote:

> Dear gentoo devs
> In August I reported the following bug:
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=590404
> James Le Cuirot suggested to automatically use the --with-sysroot
> configure switch when cross-compiling (
> checking for its presence in --help like for --docdir).
>
> I proposed a patch in the above bug report for phase-helpers.sh. However
> as the current version of phase-helpers.sh calls "
> ___eapi_econf_passes_", I suppose that we should add a corresponding
> ___eapi_econf_passes_--with-sysroot function in eapi.sh.
> There I am not sure which EAPIs are allowed to be modified.
>
> What do you think?

Sorry for not replying to the bug report recently, I'm battling on many
fronts. That function would not make sense unless --with-sysroot is
introduced into PMS. We could do that but many existing ebuilds would
fail to cross-compile and with hundreds of ebuilds still sitting at
EAPI 0, we could be waiting a long time for fixes. I noted that while
PMS does say which options you must pass, it doesn't say that you
cannot pass additional ones. I've tested it a lot and I've never seen
--with-sysroot break any ebuilds, while it fixes very many, so I
believe it would be safe to pass this option on all EAPIs. We would
probably only pass it when SYSROOT!=/ anyway so it wouldn't affect many
users. This is more or less what you did in your own patch. We are
discussing exactly what influence SYSROOT should have on Portage in
bug #573306 so that we can cement this into EAPI 7 but I believe we can
still rely on SYSROOT in earlier EAPIs when it's set to the same value
as ROOT.

-- 
James Le Cuirot (chewi)
Gentoo Linux Developer