Cross-compiling Domoticz? Topic is solved

[Toni]

Has anybody been working on cross-compiling Domoticz for Raspberry on Linux on Intel hardware?

The reason why I'm asking is that there are free cloud build services, and we've been working with gizmocuz to have Domoticz built automatically from the Github repository. This now works for win32 and linux x86_64 builds, but it would be nice to have Raspberry supported as well (as well as other Arm-based devices). Meanwhile, I'll try to look what scaleway.com could do for us.

[pepijn]

Did you try to do this using Docker.
Here http://kitware.com/blog/home/post/887 is a good start.

[Toni]

Thanks, this is a really good pointer. travis-ci.org natively supports Docker images, so all this needs now is some time, coffee and Dr. Pepper. The goal is to make a new 'bleeding edge' build available for all supported platforms within some 30 minutes from a push to Github, and also to automatically build all pull requests.

[Toni]

OK, I now have Ubuntu 12.04 LTS running on VirtualBox (the same Ubuntu version as in Travis-CI), and I have Docker and Docker image thewtex/cross-compiler-linux-armv6 installed... So some progress, the next thing is to figure out what to feed to cmake to make it work. The ability to snapshot the virtual machine is really handy in this kind of work Oops - no problem, just restore to the last known good snapshot and boot again.

[Toni]

Some progress... Travis-CI now builds for Linux AMD64 and OSX, and on my own development branch I also have a third target, ARMv6 using Docker with thewtex/cross-compiler-linux-armv6. It does not compile anything yet, but yesterday I almost got the OpenZWave part built (it compiles, but fails on the link phase due to missing libudev.so.1). Still trying to figure out the proper way to install libudev-dev and libboost-all-dev for the armhf architecture for cross-compilation.

[Toni]

OK, first step done. I still didn't figure out how to install the needed 'dev' library dependencies (libudev-dev, libboost-all-dev, libusb-dev etc) into the cross-compile environment. But building on a Raspberry QEMU Docker container works (I'm using the philipz/rpi-raspbian Docker image). The only downside is that it takes close to 4 hours on my old laptop (Intel Core 2 DUO T7500 @ 2.20 GHz). Even if the Travis-CI machines would be 10 times faster (which I doubt is not the case), it would still be too slow. But at least there's now a starting point.

[ViperScull]

I've been trying tu use distcc to cross-compile domoticz for armv6h in a x64 environment, but I've had no luck so far.
It fails to compile remotely. Both systems runs arch linux up to date, and gcc versions are the same, it's odd.
Anyway, this approach is probably much easier to set up. No virtualization needed.

By the way, I don't think RPi takes 4 hours to compile domoticz. How come a Core 2 Duo takes that time? Did you compile with just one thread?

[Toni]

By the way, I don't think RPi takes 4 hours to compile domoticz. How come a Core 2 Duo takes that time? Did you compile with just one thread?

This was full virtualization. So an emulated Raspberry Pi on QEMU, building on emulated C++ compiler. No wonder it's slow.

Now I have the 'buildroot' environment cooking. Maybe that could finally do it...

[Toni]

I actually managed to create a Docker container with 'buildroot', so that Domoticz could be cross-compiled on Ubuntu (on Intel hardware) for Raspberry Pi. I think the same would be possible for Synology as well.

[Toni]

Are you cross-compiling, are compiling remotely on the target machine? I guess the latter...

[nayr]

takes me about 30mins to directly compile from scratch on my CuBox.. might just get your self an arm build box, my buddy maintains the package repo for Arch Linux Arm and he just does remote builds on a farm of native build boxes with NFS mounts.

[Toni]

No. I'm cross-compiling.

Nice Like I said, I had a proof-of-concept on building Domoticz for Raspberry Pi in the cloud, with Travis-CI. It still had a few rough edges, and it was a bit slow compared to the Linux & OSX build. Tried it here a few times: https://travis-ci.org/domoticz/domoticz/

[nayr]

yes I am.. and to prove it I cloned a whole new path and built it just for you:

Code: Select all

Linking CXX executable domoticz
[100%] Built target domoticz

real	35m23.989s

I usually start watching a TV show when I kick off a full build.. at about 40mins for an hour episode w/out commercials it works pretty well.. I do alot of code hacking on Domoticz and there are a few files (mainworker.cpp for example) that will trigger a full rebuild if with the slightest alteration... if it took 2.5h I would not even bother wasting my time.

CuBox is an IMX6 Quad Core w/2GB ram and an eSata drive.. the bus speeds top out at about 500Mbps so IO access is pretty snappy.

[nayr]

this isint passively cooled? news to me.. wonder where they put a fan

[nayr]

I dont get why your running Gentoo on such an underpowered machine without a proper build box, my performance is not staggering.. I hear the Raspberry PI#2 gets similar build times.. perhaps you should look running on something a bit newer than armv5? even my $35 beaglebones are armv7

I am here because I tried the cross compile thing for a while and found it a huge hassle loaded with issues, as I got more devices I was seeking help from my friend @ArchLinux on cross-compiling thats when he showed me a bunch of cheap arm platforms that would shred the build times I was seeing on the FPU crippled armv5 and lowly armv7's.. it was good advice I am just trying to share.. I still have some armv5 pogoplugs in operation and I am glad I never have to build on em.

[AlleyCat]

I compiled Buildroot with Domoticz and although the system works the domoticz version is 4.5876 and not 4.9700.

System configuration:
- Target Architecture ARM (Raspberry Pi3)
- Build Option raspberrypi3_defconfig
- OpenZwave and all the other dependencies

The files downloaded to the buildroot/dl/domoticz is domoticz-4.9700.tar.gz
The system will not update from the Setup-Check for Updates.
Any suggestion why I am getting a wrong revision of Domoticz?

Thanks,
AlleyCat

[gordonb3]

The problem is that the tarball you downloaded does not contain the git repository and the versioning procedure in cmake falls back to the information in appversion.default. Which is set to display sub version 5876.