Pixel Purrito

I wrote a thing about how I've been using the #ZigLang toolchain to cross-compile small tools (almost) effortlessly. Not that I used the programming language itself much, but the “zig cc” tooling is great! The article also features #MesonBuild, which I like to call “the least annoying of build systems, probably”.

You can read it here: https://perezdecastro.org/2023/standalone-binaries-zigcc-meson.html

Standalone Binaries With Zig CC and Meson

Nov 27, 2023 at 6:50pmWeb
Show threadHaelwenn /элвэн/ Mar 5, 2024
@aperezdc Reminds me of why I got quite glad when gentoo added LLVM/clang support in it's crossdev tool as now cross-compiling packages is much more straightforward, no more stages of gcc/binutils that are prone to failures.
(And compared to zig toolchain, it means I can still cross-compile for glibc)
Show threadPixel PurritoMar 5, 2024

@lanodan indeed, Clang is much more reasonable when it comes to cross-compilation. It still needs a sysroot for the target architecture, which “zig cc” bypasses for simple-enough tools by bundling a copy of Musl. That is the killer feature IMO and there is no reason why Clang couldn't do something similar.

I have in mind this idea of making something like Buildroot but much, much simpler, targeted towards cross-compiling @WPEWebKit and its dependencoes using Clang, with some Bubblewrap sprinkled in to isolate the build from the build system, but I haven't had time to do more than some shell scripts to test the idea to the point of getting Busybox built.