[Haifux] Announcing a new project - fakeroot-ng

[Shachar Shemesh]

Ori Idan wrote:

> The target embedded system, usually runs as root, however on your host 
> machine where you cross compile and prepare the images to download you 
> wouldn't like to run as root.
Actually, if it is actual cross-compiling, then chroot will not work 
anyways. Very few platform combinations (x86_64 and i386 is, more or 
less, the only example that comes to mind) will allow you to cross 
compile and then run on the same platform.

However, "embedded", at least to me (but I know I'm not the only one) is 
more about distribution methods and about mode of operation of the end 
product than it is about CPU type. It may actually be (and I have such 
cases as clients) that the target platform runs the same hardware 
platform as the one doing the compiling.

My current client is producing a display for airplane cockpits. Their 
setup runs a PC on a chip. It is not the usual embedded platform, in 
that instead of costing a lot less than a standard PC, it costs a lot 
more. Still, as far as distribution methods, compilation methods etc. it 
is fairly standard embedded development. You probably COULD install a 
standard Linux distribution on it (it actually runs standard Windows XP 
some of the time), but you don't want to. You want to run an OS where 
you know how to upgrade it, know how to distribute new versions, and 
tailor it to your needs. This is before we start discussing Class 3 
avionic electronics certifications, where another division of this 
particular client (that wasn't my project) actually removed lots of 
stuff from the kernel, including the TCP/IP stack (they used some custom 
written replacement), so they can minimize the certification costs.

Shachar