Re: slow pkgsrc installs / cross-compilation

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

Aaron J. Grier wrote:
> 
> perhaps someone in tech-pkg can comment further on cross-compliation
> (non-)existing in pkgsrc.

The package has to support cross-compilation, and many don't.  Autoconf is
not a simple tool to use, and many maintainers don't know much about
cross-compilation even if they're familiar with the concept.  Many
packages therefore bear the implicit assumption that the target machine is
the build machine, or at least one very much like it.  

> > It seems to spend most of the
> > time running configure and testing the same things over and over
> > again. Is there a way to make configure cache its findings?
> 
> it does, but the cache doesn't persist across build invocations.

ISTR this was solved a few years ago in pkgsrc.  There used to be an
annoying pause even on modern hardware while configure determined the
maximum command line length.  

HTH.  

--jkl