PTXdist ======= Necessary Packages ------------------ In order to build ptxdist, you need three archives: ptxdist-.tgz (mandatory) ptxdist--patches.tgz (mandatory) ptxdist--projects.tgz (optional) Extract these archives into some build directory; the tarballs are put together in a way that they extract into one subdir ptxdist-. Installation ------------ To install PTXdist, just run ./configure --prefix= to configure the packet, then make to build everything and make install to install it. When you start using PTXdist, make sure your $PATH environment variable points to /bin, because that's where the ptxdist frontend program is being installed to. For developers who want to work with svn versions of PTXdist it is only necessary to run "./configure && make" and set the PATH variable to the bin/ directory inside the PTXdist tree. Quickstart ---------- PTXdist comes with some example projects in the ptxdist--projects.tgz archive. If this packet is installed with ptxdist it is possible to "clone" the example projects and use them i.e. as a start for your own project. Find out which projects are available, using $ ptxdist projects Then clone a project with $ ptxdist clone myproject This copies the project named into ./myproject, which is your "workspace" for the following actions. Change into your project's workspace and build everything: $ cd myproject $ ptxdist go This builds a root filesystem into the root/ directory of your workspace. If the project was built for the same architecture as your devenlopment machine, you can try it with $ chroot root/ /bin/sh If you have more time to find out how it works, read on. Idea ---- PTXdist is a tool which can be used to generate a root tree for all kinds of Linux systems. It was written with embedded systems in mind, but there is no reason why you can't use it to configure your firewall, router or whatever dedicated "device" comes to your mind. The job works like this: you run 'ptxdist menuconfig', configure what you need and get a 'ptxconfig' file. Run 'ptxdist go' and you'll find a root tree in root/. Voila. All magic necessary to do these things in a cross enviroment are written into "recipies", living in rules/*.make, and config menues in rules/*.in. Directory Layout ---------------- These files and directories are supposed to be in an empty project directory: kernelconfig.native kernel .config file for the native kernel kernelconfig.target kernel .config file for the target kernel patches/ project specific patches, overwrites the generic ones from PTXdist projectroot/ put files here which are to be copied over to the target's root directory, like for example etc files, scripts, ... Note that the copying has to be done explicitly by some project specific rule file. ptxconfig .config file to configure the userland for your project. rules/ contains project specific rules src -> ... link to point to your directory containing tarball files for the packets. Additionally some other directories are being built when you run "ptxdist go" or other start other build targets. build-host/ build directory for host tools build-cross/ build directory for cross tools build-target/ build directory for target tools images/ 'ptxdist images' creates tarballs and filesystem images in this directory. local/ tools which are installed locally go to this dir root/ root filesystem for the target state/ state files (show in which state packages currently are during the compilation) For more details look at the output of 'ptxdist --help' or see the PTXdist manual. Bugs ---- - search for FIXMEs - see TODO, which is out of date :-) Robert Schwebel , 2006-02-19