On Thu, 7 May 1998, Jay Maynard wrote:

> Has anyone successfully built a cross-development environment? How in
> blue blazes did you do it?

Ragge has done this successfully under NetBSD/i386, and I see that he's
already followed up concisely to your message on the matter. :-)  I've
been meaning to put together a cross-compile setup myself, and then to
provide a nice write-up on the procedure.  

A cross-compile environment was one of the more often asked additions to
NetBSD/vax tool collection about a year ago.  Ragge posted some notes on
doing this several months back. Compiling everything natively on your VAX
can be time consuming.  It's definitely rewarding in many respects. 
Having a system rebuild its own OS is always sort of novel.  Plus you
REALLY learn to appreciate purpose of Makefiles.  Prior to having a VAX,
I'd habitually run `make clean' between compiles on my faster systems...
because what were a few minutes more of compile time?  On a MicroVAX II
those extra minutes tended to translate to hours or occassionally days. 
Working within the limits of slower systems really gets you efficiency
concious, which is a very good thing IMHO.  It's easy to get sloppy when
you've got spare cycles to burn. 

> Alternatively, anyone have a VAX on the net I
> could use to build binaries until I get my system running natively?  

I wish I did :-)  I've got systems I could put on-line if I actually had
ready access to the net.  Or even if I had the money to pay to put them
directly on the net.  At various times I know of others on this list who
have offered accounts on NetBSD/vax systems to aid developer efforts, you
may have even already gotten some offers for this via e-mail.  The
port-vax list has a pretty decent group of people behind it.

Also, a good option for you might be to get your hands on one of the
supported models for your development work.  I'm willing to help out in
that area if you're interested.

-brian.
---
Brian "JARAI" Chase | http://world.std.com/~bdc/ | VAXZilla LIVES!!!