Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2022 14:52:22 +0100
To: Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com>
Cc: ~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: Availability of cross toolchains in aports
From: =?UTF-8?Q?S=C3=B6ren?= Tempel <soeren@soeren-tempel.net>
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Hi,

"Drew DeVault" <sir@cmpwn.com> wrote:
> I think that we should have a greater variety of cross compiler
> toolchains available in aports, providing in reach repo at least enough
> cross-compilers to build Alpine for any target supported by a stable
> Alpine release.
>=20
> Thoughts?

Thanks for raising this issue. I definitely agree that cross compiler
toolchains for supported architectures would be nice to have in the
repositories.

My two cents on this: In my view cross compilation becomes a lot easier
when using Clang instead of GCC (i.e. you can just pass -target instead
of maintaining separate GCC toolchains for different architectures [1]).
As such, it is already possible today to cross compile C/C++ object
files with Clang on Alpine (e.g. `clang -c -target aarch64-alpine-linux-mus=
l`).
Linking is a different story though and furthermore aports.git does not
really support compilation with Clang at the moment. However, there
have been occasional discussions on IRC if Alpine should switch from GCC
to Clang anyhow. Maybe this yet another argument for this switch?

Greetings,
S=C3=B6ren

[1]: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/CrossCompilation.html#cross-compilation-is=
sues