kumquat-buildroot/docs
Samuel Martin 5e84b8b73c manual: rework the whole documentation stub
The new skeleton of the manual as it has been thought:
1.  About Buildroot:
     Presentation of Buildroot
2.  Starting up:
     Everything to quickly and easily start working with Buildroot
3.  Working with Buildroot
     Basics to make your work fitting your needs
4.  Troubleshooting
5.  Going further in Buildroot's innards
     Explaination of how buildroot is organised, how it works, etc
6.  Developer Guidelines
7.  Getting involved
8.  Contibuting to Buildroot
9.  Legal notice
10. Appendix

It is easy to distinguish two parts in this plan:
- Sections 1 to 4 mainly address people starting with Buildroot
- Sections 5 to 10 are more focused on how to develop Buildroot itself

Most of the existing sections have just been moved in the hierarchy,
few were split and dispatch in, what i think was the relevant section,
and numerous others have been created.

Signed-off-by: Samuel Martin <s.martin49@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Korsgaard <jacmet@sunsite.dk>
2012-11-15 23:58:38 +01:00
..
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manual manual: rework the whole documentation stub 2012-11-15 23:58:38 +01:00
about.html
copyright.txt
developer.html
docs.html
download.html
favicon.ico
footer.html
git.html
header.html
index.html
lists.html
news.html
README
robots.txt
stylesheet.css

To build and use the buildroot stuff, do the following:

1) run 'make menuconfig'
2) select the packages you wish to compile
3) run 'make'
4) wait while it compiles
5) Use your shiny new root filesystem. Depending on which sort of
    root filesystem you selected, you may want to loop mount it,
    chroot into it, nfs mount it on your target device, burn it
    to flash, or whatever is appropriate for your target system.

You do not need to be root to build or run buildroot.  Have fun!

Offline build:
==============

In order to do an offline-build (not connected to the net), fetch all
selected source by issuing a
$ make source

before you disconnect.
If your build-host is never connected, then you have to copy buildroot
and your toplevel .config to a machine that has an internet-connection
and issue "make source" there, then copy the content of your dl/ dir to
the build-host.

Building out-of-tree:
=====================

Buildroot supports building out of tree with a syntax similar
to the Linux kernel. To use it, add O=<directory> to the
make command line, E.G.:

$ make O=/tmp/build

And all the output files (including .config) will be located under /tmp/build.

More finegrained configuration:
===============================

You can specify a config-file for uClibc:
$ make UCLIBC_CONFIG_FILE=/my/uClibc.config

And you can specify a config-file for busybox:
$ make BUSYBOX_CONFIG_FILE=/my/busybox.config

To use a non-standard host-compiler (if you do not have 'gcc'),
make sure that the compiler is in your PATH and that the library paths are
setup properly, if your compiler is built dynamically:
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3.orig HOSTCXX=gcc-4.3-mine

Depending on your configuration, there are some targets you can use to
use menuconfig of certain packages. This includes:
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 linux-menuconfig
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 uclibc-menuconfig
$ make HOSTCC=gcc-4.3 busybox-menuconfig

Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the
buildroot mailing list: buildroot@uclibc.org