[Buildroot] libffi or the crazy world of toolchain options

[Yann E. MORIN]

Thomas, All,

On Saturday 25 August 2012 17:06:05 Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> I got sick of having build issues related to libffi needs of threads,
> of the absence of support for sh2a in libffi, so I did the work needed
> to ensure that libffi would not be used anymore in those two cases.
> 
> This is a boring work, because libffi is mandatory for Python and
> glib2, and glib2 has a crazy number of reverse dependencies that do
> "select BR2_PACKAGE_LIBGLIB2", and therefore overstepping the
> dependencies of glib2.
> 
> This patch, I hope, illustrate how crazy this story of "depends on"
> needed for toolchain options has become. We need to find a solution
> for this. Yann has proposed something (see
> http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2012-August/057144.html).
> 
> Opinions? My patch, or Yann's solution? Other solutions?

I'm sorry to say that, but pushing dependencies down to every package is
ugly.

What would happen when/if hte next libffi release does support sh2a?
You'd have to undo most of this work with another thousands-packages patch.

Today, I'll be working on my proposal (eg. the BR2_PKG_XX_AVAILABLE stuff),
and will post a patchset.

Thus, we'll be able to compare.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

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