[Scratchbox-users] Gentoo and Scratchbox

[Andrew Lees]

I am attempting, with varying amounts of success to use the Gentoo 
package system to manage embedded builds in Scratchbox.  There are a 
number of interactions, and it's not always clear how to best go about 
fixing problems.  Currently I am adopting the following strategy:

1. Use a stage 1 tarball to get the basic tools, put these into a 
scratchbox host compiler environment.  This can somewhat poison the 
scratchbox environment, so a selective untarring might be a good idea.
2. Get a recent portage snapshot into /usr/portage in the host environment
3. In the target environment, link /usr/lib/portage and /usr/portage to 
the host elements
4. copy the /etc files to the target.
5. manually compile su for the host, scratchbox doesn't have it, and 
it's occasionally useful.
6. Add a 99local to /etc/env.d in the target, with all the useful 
scratchbox bin directories there.
7. do all emerging, etc using fakeroot
8. search the portage tools for absolute references to scripts, and link 
those to the real things (scripted search and link)

All portage and build tools are added to the host env, and become 
visible in the target via the paths.

It *nearly* works!  Various gotchas show up to slow things down.  In 
particular gcc -print-file-name=<library.so> doesn't work for libraries 
added by compilation in the target environment.  Does anyone know how to 
fix this?

Is what I have outlined a reasonable approach?  Is anyone doing anything 
similar?