Tor said:
There are other reasons for building for Pandora using a separate PC, not just performance.
Space? I have 64gigs of disk space on my Touchbook, and 48gigs on my Beagle. This is more than adequate. Advantage: I don't have any space wasted on a cross-compiler ..
The most important is space. Take my N800, for example. I have built software for it for three years now, and over time I have accumulated a large amount of software and libraries. All these appications I build takes room. Not to mention the SDK itself.
A cross-compiling environment will *never* be as slim as an onboard compiler. The space requirements for an onboard compiler are always going to be less than that for the cross-compiler, for the simple fact that you have to have a copy of the libs on your cross-compiler environment machine ..
In fact my laptop got so full I had to replace its harddisk. I don't want to 'make clean' a lot of stuff just to temporarily save space.
The only time 'make clean' makes sense in my environment is when I want to build something fresh. I don't have any 'old forgotten trees' for the Pandora/Touchbook/Beagle, since I'm doing compiling-on-board, but for other systems like the Wiz and GP2X, god help me if I ever lose that configuration or for some reason want to wipe the disk its all stored on .. was a really big hassle to set up and get working properly, and so that PC is now hindered by the install of cross-compiler environments..
My N800 has two full-size SD slots (like the Pandora), but am I supposed to keep swapping cards all the time to get access to my development and build environment? Much better to have everthing available all the time, on my other, larger computer.
Use what works for you, but don't be so ignorant to try out compiler-onboard as a methodology before you write it off, is all I'm saying. For me as a developer with over 30 years experience, cross-compiling has rarely paid off in favour of a proper onboard development configuration .. There have been times when its necessary and required (such as my current job, for example, where I build embedded systems for safety-critical applications and *all* our toolchains have to be hosted elsewhere for validation purpose) but in general, for the development-for-fun I do in my spare time, cross-compiling is a hassle with little true reward beyond a sense that I'm finally getting a use for my multi-$1000 mega-PC.
Then there's the additional tools. However much I find or build for my N800, or for the Pandora when it gets here, I still have more on my laptop computer. I have Git, without having to build and install for the N800, I have full-blown XEmacs with everything, I have _lots_ of other stuff that I would never need to have installed on the N800.
Thats all quite luxurious, no question about it. Nobody said you should *EDIT* on the platforms .. just that you should *BUILD* .. I know, I know, in these days of IDE-addled new-school coders, such a concept is entirely foreign, but you know what I use to build software? cscope+vim+make+svn. Good enough for me!
Instead I have the mobile applications I want on the N800, then I keep the development environment I want on the laptop computer.
Thats all very clean and nice for you .. so use it! It works for you!
My reaction is mostly to the knee-jerk ("oh god, I would *never* compile onboard, what a shameful and hopelessly un-fashionable thing to do, goodness") responses to the point I made, which is this: you *can* be productive with compiler-onboard as a methodology, especially for Pandora, Touchbook, Beagleboard, and now N900 too (just got an N900 a few days ago to set it up as a build target ..)
