Hi guys,
Spent some hours yesterday reading the OOo hackers' site while downloading the Head from Olegil. Since the best speed I got was about 20k ch/sec and the average was more like 12-13 k ch/sec, I had plenty of time :-P
Anyway, it seems that, unlike Kaffe, there is no existing way to build OOo for a platform different from the build platform, ie to cross-compile. I suggest that this ability is very important to us (and to anyone else trying a port to a new platform). Perhaps adding that functionality to the makefiles would be of benefit, not only to us, but to all personkind.
[If you don't know how Kaffe builds] Kaffe runs a configure script that performs a number of test edits/compiles and makes up a list of "what is on this system and what isn't" (headers, utilities, all the dependencies that we have been talking about). With this list in the file "config.h", the build can proceed with some confidence that it will work. To make a cross-compile, you have to edit your own version of "config.h", then perform a build bypassing the configure step. The build script takes arguments like "--target=68k-amigaos" and adjusts path syntax, JIT code files, etc, according to the hardware and OS. Hopefully the result will work when you take it to the target machine.
With this process, Kaffe has been ported to many different platforms, some of them embedded applications. [End of tutorial]
I sort of expected to see the same series of steps with OOo, but it looks as though it has never been contemplated or implemented. Should we consider implementing a similar approach for OOo?
cheers