Recent changes to Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler

Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler modified by Arjen Markus

Arjen Markus — Fri, 14 May 2021 08:26:49 -0000

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 paste.
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-From version 2.6.0 cmake includes support for cross-compiling. The [CMake wiki](http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Cross_Compiling) provides a useful source of background information here.
+From version 2.6.0 cmake includes support for cross-compiling. The [CMake manual](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-toolchains.7.html) provides a useful source of background information here.

 Cross-compiling plplot is complicated because a full build involves lots of external libraries for different drivers and multiple different compilers /interpreters for the language bindings. However, it is possible to build a cut-down version of PLplot using cmake. PLplot compiles and runs several executables to create source files / data for the project at build time. Obviously it is not generally possible to run the cross-compiled versions and so access is also required to a native build tree in which to find the native versions of the build-time executables. Support for this was only added to PLplot on 3rd March 2009 (svn revision 9665).

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 Create a CMake toolchain
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-See the [CMake wiki](http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Cross_Compiling) for details of this for individual platforms. The mingw32 example worked fine for me.
+See the [CMake manual](https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/manual/cmake-toolchains.7.html) for details of this for individual platforms. The mingw32 example worked fine for me.

 Building a cross-compiled version of PLplot
 -------------------------------------------

Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler modified by Alan W. Irwin

Alan W. Irwin — Sat, 03 Nov 2018 08:35:41 -0000

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 From version 2.6.0 cmake includes support for cross-compiling. The [CMake wiki](http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Cross_Compiling) provides a useful source of background information here.

 Cross-compiling plplot is complicated because a full build involves lots of external libraries for different drivers and multiple different compilers /interpreters for the language bindings. However, it is possible to build a cut-down version of PLplot using cmake. PLplot compiles and runs several executables to create source files / data for the project at build time. Obviously it is not generally possible to run the cross-compiled versions and so access is also required to a native build tree in which to find the native versions of the build-time executables. Support for this was only added to PLplot on 3rd March 2009 (svn revision 9665).

Discussion for Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler page

Ruiming Tian — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 20:16:34 -0000

I had problems trying to follow these steps:
My CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE looks like this:

set(CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME Windows)
set(CMAKE_C_COMPILER i686-w64-mingw32-gcc)
set(CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER i686-w64-mingw32-g++)
set(CMAKE_RC_COMPILER i686-w64-mingw32-windres)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH /usr/i686-w64-mingw32)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_PROGRAM NEVER)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_LIBRARY ONLY)
set(CMAKE_FIND_ROOT_PATH_MODE_INCLUDE ONLY)

The command I use is:
/usr/local/bin/cmake-3.6.3/cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../toolchain.cmake -DDEFAULT_NO_DEVICES=ON -DPLD_svg=ON -DPKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=Not-Found ../pplot

The cmake filed with errors:
fatal error: termios.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: crt_externs.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: sys/wait.h: No such file or directory
error: ld returned 1 exit status

Can you help?

Thanks

Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler modified by Alan W. Irwin

Alan W. Irwin — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 19:02:07 -0000

Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler modified by Alan W. Irwin

Alan W. Irwin — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:31:30 -0000

Building_PLplot_with_a_cross-compiler modified by Alan W. Irwin

Alan W. Irwin — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 22:30:43 -0000

From version 2.6.0 cmake includes support for cross-compiling. The CMake wiki provides a useful source of background information here.

Cross-compiling plplot is complicated because a full build involves lots of external libraries for different drivers and multiple different compilers /interpreters for the language bindings. However, it is possible to build a cut-down version of PLplot using cmake. PLplot compiles and runs several executables to create source files / data for the project at build time. Obviously it is not generally possible to run the cross-compiled versions and so access is also required to a native build tree in which to find the native versions of the build-time executables. Support for this was only added to PLplot on 3rd March 2009 (svn revision 9665).

The following instructions were written and tested on using the mingw32 cross-compiler for Windows running under Linux. Debian and Ubuntu supply packages for this environment so it is simple to install and test.

Build a native version of PLplot

This can just be a normal PLplot build. The only thing to be careful of it to ensure that it uses dynamic drivers if you intend to use them for the cross compiler otherwise get-drv-info will not be built.

Create a CMake toolchain

See the CMake wiki for details of this for individual platforms. The mingw32 example worked fine for me.

Building a cross-compiled version of PLplot

Create a new directory for the cross-compile build and change to that directory.
Run cmake.

- You probably want to disable all languages and drivers by default and then just enable the ones you need. You can achieve this by setting DEFAULT_NO_DEVICES=ON and DEFAULT_NO_BINDINGS=ON. Failure to do this can lead to strange results if cmake picks up native rather than cross-compiler versions of tools, for example the fortran compiler, which are not part of your toolchain.
- You will need to set the following CMake variables.
  - CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE: points to the CMake toolchain file for this cross-compiler.
  - CMAKE_NATIVE_BINARY_DIR: points to the top-level directory in the native PLplot build tree.
- You will need to disable pkg-config support or ensure that pkg-config is using the correct package information files for the cross-platform. The simplest way of disabling this is by setting PKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE to something like NOT-FOUND.
- You will either need to disable support for the CSA library, or explicitly set NanAwareCCompiler (probably to ON) since this uses a build-time executable to check for support. This can't be executed for a cross-compiled environment.

Run make to build the cross-compiled version of PLplot.

Using this method I have successfully cross-compiled the C++ bindings and the ps and svg drivers. Note that neither of these has external dependencies. For reference the cmake command line looked like

cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/Toolchain-mingw32.cmake -DDEFAULT_NO_DEVICES=ON -DPLD_ps=ON -DPLD_svg=ON -DPKG_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE=Not-Found -DDEFAULT_NO_BINDINGS=ON -DENABLE_cxx=ON -DNaNAwareCCompiler=ON -DCMAKE_NATIVE_BINARY_DIR=/home/andrew/software/plplot/build
../plplot

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