[COLUG] A perplexing problem

[Jess Balint]

Robb -

Sounds like fun. Maybe you should check out LFS - Linux From Scratch. 
They explain this whole process is great detail. The way that you get 
make,gcc and the others is to "bootstrap" them from your system. That's 
how the stuff was originally created. As for UML, it's quite slow and 
because of that it has a limited number of uses right now, IMHO. I 
wouldn't recommend trying to compile a whole distro under it. It would 
probably be better to dual boot.

I think the compile flags you may be referring to are actually what is 
called "cross-compiling". They allow you to compile for another 
processor architecture, eg. Intel -> PowerPC. In this case, you have to 
bootstrap a cross compiler from your current compiler.

Also, if you wanna try something a little less (or more depending on how 
you look at things) painful, try ROCK Linux. They offer what they call a 
"distribution build kit". It's basically a bunch of scripts that 
configure, build all the packages and builds a distribution. It's highly 
customizable and made to be built by other people besides them.

~ Jess

Robb Bossley wrote:
> I have been messing around with uml, as well as toying with the idea of making my own "distro", simply for the learning experience - yes, I am pretty crazy.  My understanding is that most of the main utilities can be compiled from source on an already existing system, and some type of flag can be given during the compile process to cause the compiler to understand that the target "system" is a mounted filesystem other than the one currently being used.  Is this true?  If so, is this a somewhat standard flag?  How would it normally be invoked?  It seems that doing this type of build from source process is like the chicken and the egg - one cannot compile unless one has the make, gcc, glibc, etc, but one must compile these to have them.
> 
> Any help is appreciated.
> 
> Robb
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