[uClibc] uclibc and perl

[Manuel Novoa III]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 01:34:36PM +0100, Chris Wilson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I noticed that Perl support has been removed from uclibc on 2004/03/18:
> 
> ----------------------------
> revision 1.6
> date: 2004/03/18 21:02:52;  author: andersen;  state: dead;  lines: +0 -0
> Remove perl.  It doesn't work, and seems to be a support
> problem magnet.  So kill it.
> ----------------------------
> 
> This is a real pain for me, because I really want to build perl under 

Well, I doubt Erik's removal of perl from buildroot actually added to your
pain.  The perl target in buildroot had been broken for ages, and I think
it only worked for arm anyway.

> uclibc. I don't like the idea of chrooting into the uclibc root
> environment and making perl in there, because it's inconsistent with the 
> rest of the uclibc build system, and results in mixing up the perl files 
> with the uclibc development system, when my end target is not a 
> development system (no compilers, headers, etc.).

Trying to cross compiling perl is painful, since it has a build system
that involves running generated binaries on the build system itself.

> I reinstated the old perl.mk and patched it up for Perl 5.8.3, but I'm 
> having build problems (cannot make wince.h, no C preprocessor found). Is
> anyone here willing to help me fix it, or is perl no longer going to be 
> supported in uclibc?

I recently managed to cross compile perl 5.8.3 for mipsel after running
the Configure step on the unit itself.  As I recall, you need to create a
configuration for your target.  Then you need to build a uClibc miniperl
for your build system with a matching configuration.  Next, start building
perl for your target... stopping after miniperl is built.  Replace the
target miniperl with the miniperl for the build system and continue the
build.  Since you will be running uClibc miniperl on your build system,
it will either have to be staticly linked, the uClibc dynamic linker will
need to be in your path, or you will have to specify the dynamic linker
to use when building it.

Manuel