ABE patching

[Fathi Boudra]

Hi Denys,

adding linaro-toolchain ml for ABE related questions.

Hi,
I was wondering if there was a way to apply local patches to toolchain
components (gcc, binutils, glibc, etc.) when building with ABE.
The only way I know of right now is to mirror the upstream repository into own
git tree, patch it and point ABE to it; or check it out locally, patch it and
pass the resulting tarball to ABE build with --disable update flag.
I know one of ABE's requirement is "Should build all toolchains with no
custom patches", but it would be nice to be able to do so on top of official
sources... Thoughts, comments?
--
Denys

[Jim Wilson]

I was wondering if there was a way to apply local patches to toolchain
components (gcc, binutils, glibc, etc.) when building with ABE.
The only way I know of right now is to mirror the upstream repository into own
git tree, patch it and point ABE to it; or check it out locally, patch it and
pass the resulting tarball to ABE build with --disable update flag.

The normal way for tcwg to use abe is to create a git branch, and then
point abe at the git branch. This is how gerrit patch reviews work
for instance. Presumably only tcwg members can create git branches in
the tcwg git tree, but anyone can mirror it in a local git repo and
create local branches, which is what I do.

tcwg has no need for abe to support builds with patches in the source
tree, so is unlikely to implement this feature. If patch support was
added, it should be enabled by an extra option, so that we don't risk
accidentally breaking release builds.

Jim