As y'all know, I'm new here... well, mostly new.
Well then allow me to welcome you to the community.
Was wondering if someone could fill me in on this...
What's the deal with cross-lfs? Ok, I know it's a book (or, really, a set of books) for people compiling LFS on a system other than the one it will be used on.
At the moment cross-lfs is a set of scripts by the wonderful and talented Ryan Oliver that allow a user to build LFS by cross-compiling it. This, as you mentioned is necessary if you are building from one architecture but want to run the binaries on another architecture. There is also a book based on Ryan's scripts under development by Jim Gifford and others on the dev team. This book under development is expected to become version 7 of the LFS book.
My understanding, from what I've read here, is that the reader will initially be presented with an option similar to this:
Q: How will you be compiling LFS? A: I will be compiling LFS on [[choice #1]] to be used on [[choice #2]]
Where [[choice #1]] will be, for example, a drop-down menu with choices "an x86 (aka IA32, Pentiums)", "an Alpha", "an x86-64 (aka IA64)", etc. And [[choice #2]] will be either the same, or perhaps the same with the extra option "the same machine".
That's the current idea as I understand it. Through the magic of XML, an attempt will be made to present a book to the user based on their requirements. I don't do web development so maybe some one else can speak better to this part.
Will cross-lfs eventually replace the standard LFS? So, and equivalent of the standard LFS (as it is today) would be choice1="x86", choice2="the same machine".
There's been some recent discussion about this. The new cross-lfs book *might* totally replace the current LFS book if the aforementioned XML magic can be pulled off. Another idea brought up was simply to maintain two books, one for people cross building and one for people where the host and target system are the same.
If cross-lfs is everything I've mentioned here, then it sounds like an exciting challenge to the dev team.
If cross-lfs isn't going to cover "Compiling on the same machine it will be used on", then might i suggest such a thing here and now? I can see, however, that it may slow down progress, since to upgrade mypackage-2.3.8 to mypackage-2.4.0 would require thorough testing on a great many more machine combinations than previously needed.
Anyway, sorry to ask questions that I'm sure everyone's sick of answering :/
Don't worry about asking questions. Believe me, there are lots of questions that come up on the -support list that I (and others?) grow tired of answering, but that's a whole other story. :)
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