Nick Bane wrote:
> Discussion about whether this alternative (or another alternative?) build 
> system would serve the community better is opened. There are at least 4 
> other people who have used this system and given it initial approval. My 
> main concern is that this is very developer and less distribution centred 
> (though it should by a simple matter to upgrade any deficiencies) and may 
> not be what we want in trunk. Additionally there is no proper documentation 
> yet though its not hard to grok.
> 
> To use the new system, check it out, do "make menuconfig" inside the 
> branch, select your favourite options and type "make".
> 
> Packages are in directories under the package directory and include a 
> Config.in file and a <name>.mk makefile which adds to the overall build system.
> 
> If there is no great opposition, menuconfig2 which adds board support 
> (Balloon3/4 but maybe others) may be adopted in a few weeks.
> 
> Comments and opinions sought.

Hi Nick,

you do not know me though I have been lurking on this list for a long
time. I am interested on the Balloon 3 board as a mean to validate
Xenomai (http://www.xenomai.org) releases on PXA processors. In order to
generate root filesystems for validating Xenomai on the boards I have, I
developed something called mkrootfs:
http://git.xenomai.org/?p=mkrootfs.git;a=summary

My intent is to have a developer-oriented rootfs building tool: I want
to change anything (configuration, source file, unselect a package),
type make, and the change to be taken into account. The tool is named
"mkrootfs" for now, for lack of a better name, and is based on Kbuild.

I have mainly worked on the "engine", the basic support, so a lot of
things are probably missing for your needs (currently, we only have
busybox, Xenomai, and LTP for instance). However, the advantage of using
this tool is that:
- it is as simple as snapgear, buildroot or ptxdist, as opposed to
openembedded
- it is more developer-oriented, in that you will need fewer magical
invocations, patches generation, etc... to simply get a change to a
source file or a package removal taken into account.
- packages are built in parallel
- maintenance would be shared with the Xenomai project.
- and last but not least, it is documented:
http://git.xenomai.org/?p=mkrootfs.git;a=blob;f=README;h=c85831a3feeaa04c1a12e04824e7787df1f78d5b;hb=HEAD
(of course, the english is probably not very correct, but that is a
starting point).

Regards.

-- 
                                                                Gilles.