File.........: 2 - Installing crosstool-NG.txt

Copyright....: (C) 2010 Yann E. MORIN <yann.morin.1998@anciens.enib.fr>

License......: Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-by-sa), v2.5

Installing crosstool-NG  /

________________________/

There are two ways you can use crosstool-NG:

 - build and install it, then get rid of the sources like you'd do for most

   programs,

 - or only build it and run from the source directory.

The former should be used if you got crosstool-NG from a packaged tarball, see

"Install method", below, while the latter is most useful for developers that

use a clone of the repository, and want to submit patches, see "The Hacker's

way", below.

Install method |

---------------+

If you go for the install, then you just follow the classical, but yet easy

./configure way:

  ./configure --prefix=/some/place

  make

  make install

  export PATH="${PATH}:/some/place/bin"

You can then get rid of crosstool-NG source. Next create a directory to serve

as a working place, cd in there and run:

  ct-ng help

See below for complete usage.

The Hacker's way |

-----------------+

If you go the hacker's way, then the usage is a bit different, although very

simple:

  ./configure --local

  make

Now, *do not* remove crosstool-NG sources. They are needed to run crosstool-NG!

Stay in the directory holding the sources, and run:

  ./ct-ng help

See below for complete usage.

Now, provided you used a clone of the repository, you can send me your changes.

See the section titled CONTRIBUTING, below, for how to submit changes.

Preparing for packaging |

------------------------+

If you plan on packaging crosstool-NG, you surely don't want to install it

in your root file system. The install procedure of crosstool-NG honors the

DESTDIR variable:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr

  make

  make DESTDIR=/packaging/place install

Shell completion |

-----------------+

crosstool-NG comes with a shell script fragment that defines bash-compatible

completion. That shell fragment is currently not installed automatically, but

this is planned.

To install the shell script fragment, you have two options:

 - install system-wide, most probably by copying ct-ng.comp into

   /etc/bash_completion.d/

 - install for a single user, by copying ct-ng.comp into ${HOME}/ and

   sourcing this file from your ${HOME}/.bashrc

Contributed code |

-----------------+

Some people contributed code that couldn't get merged for various reasons. This

code is available as lzma-compressed patches, in the contrib/ sub-directory.

These patches are to be applied to the source of crosstool-NG, prior to

installing, using something like the following:

  lzcat contrib/foobar.patch.lzma |patch -p1

There is no guarantee that a particular contribution applies to the current

version of crosstool-ng, or that it will work at all. Use contributions at

your own risk.