817622 - NSPR cannot be cross-compiled from a Windows host

Status: NEW

(NSPR :: NSPR, defect)

Description

[Brian Smith (:briansmith, :bsmith, use NEEDINFO?)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #817621 +++

The main problem is that there are several assumptions made that are valid on Android-on-Linux builds that aren't valid on Android-on-Windows builds, e.g. that the host OBJ_SUFFIX is the same as the target OBJ_SUFFIX.

I have a WIP patch for this that avoids the need to build now.exe and nsinstall.exe on Android-on-Windows cross-builds when done within the MinGW environment. This is enough to get NSPR to build on Windows.

Comment 1

[Mike Hommey [:glandium]]

It's also assumed that the toolchain is essentially the same. Only touching OBJ_SUFFIX and such things won't allow to build host tools with MSVC, for instance.

Comment 2

[Brian Smith (:briansmith, :bsmith, use NEEDINFO?)]

Attachment: Allow NSPR to be cross-compiled to Android from Windows

This patch takes advantage of two important ideas:

1. At least on MinGW, date(1) can output the date to the same precision as NSPR's now program.
2. MozillaBuild comes with a pre-built nsinstall.

Together, this means that we don't actually need a host compiler at all on Windows when using MozillaBuild. This saves a significant amount of work rewriting the build scripts to fix the wrong assumption that the host toolchain and the target toolchain are basically the same.

Note that this patch does not work in a non-MozillaBuild MinGW environment because nsinstall isn't available. However, I think it is OK to say that MozillaBuild is required for cross compiling to Android from Windows.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.