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== Outdated CHICKEN release

This is a manual page for an old and unsupported version of CHICKEN.
If you are still using it, please consider migrating to the latest
version. You can find the manual for the latest release [[/manual|here]].

[[tags: manual]]
[[toc:]]

== Cross Development

Since CHICKEN generates C code, it is relatively easy to create
programs and libraries for a different architecture than the one the
compiler is executing on, a process commonly called ''cross
compiling''. Basically you can simply compile Scheme code to C and
then invoke your target-specific cross compiler.  To automate the
process of invoking the correct C compiler with the correct settings
and to simplify the use of extensions, CHICKEN can be built in a
special "cross-compilation" mode.

Note: in the following text we refer to the "target" as being the
platform on which the software is intended to run in the end. We use
the term "host" as the system that builds this software. Others use a
different nomenclature or switch the meaning of the words.

=== Preparations

Make sure you have a cross-toolchain in your {{PATH}}. In this
example, a Linux system is used to generate binaries for an ARM based
embedded system.

==== Building the target libraries

First you need a version of the runtime system ({{libchicken}}),
compiled for the target system. Obtain and unpack a tarball of the
CHICKEN sources, or check out the code from the official code
repository, then build the libraries and necessary development files:

make ARCH= \
     PREFIX=/usr \
     PLATFORM=linux \
     HOSTSYSTEM=arm-none-linux-gnueabi \
     DESTDIR=$HOME/target \
     TARGET_FEATURES="-no-feature x86 -feature arm" \
     install

This will build CHICKEN and install it in {{~/target}}, which we use
as a temporary place to store the target files. A few things to note:

* {{ARCH}} is empty, since we don't want the build process to detect the architecture (since the target-architecture is likely to be different).  If you know the right string to represent target architecture (see {{C_PLATFORM_TYPE}} in {{chicken.h}} for the supported options), you can set {{ARCH}} with that value.
* {{PREFIX}} gives the prefix ''on the target system'', under which the
libraries will finally be installed. In this case it will be {{/usr/lib}}.

* {{PLATFORM}} determines the target platform. It must be one of the officially
supported platforms CHICKEN runs on.

* {{HOSTSYSTEM}} is an identifier for the target system and will be used as
the name prefix of the cross C compiler (in this case {{arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc}}).
If your cross compiler does not follow this convention, pass {{C_COMPILER}} and
{{LIBRARIAN}} to the {{make(1)}} invocation, with the names of the C compiler and
{{ar(1)}} tool, respectively.

* {{DESTDIR}} holds the directory where the compiled library files will temporarily
be installed into.

* {{TARGET_FEATURES}} contains extra options to be passed to the target-specific
Scheme translator; in this case we disable and enable features so that code like
the following will do the right thing when cross-compiled:

<enscript hightlight=scheme>
(cond-expand
  (x86 <do this ...>)
  ...)
</enscript>

* If you obtained the sources from a source-code repository and not
from an official release tarball, you will need a {{chicken}}
executable to compile the Scheme sources of the runtime system. In
this case pass yet another variable to the {{make(1)}} invocation:
{{CHICKEN=<where the "chicken" executable is>}}.

* You can also put all those variables into a file, say {{config.mk}}
and run {{make CONFIG=config.mk}}.

You should now have these files on {{~/target}}:

You should now transfer {{libchicken.so}} to the target system, and place
it in {{/usr}}.

==== Building the "cross chicken"

Next, we will build another chicken, one that uses the cross C compiler to
generate target-specific code that uses the target-specific runtime library
we have just built.

Again, unpack a CHICKEN release tarball or a source tree and run
{{make(1)}} once again:

make PLATFORM=linux \
     PREFIX=$HOME/cross-chicken \
     TARGETSYSTEM=arm-none-linux-gnueabi \
     PROGRAM_PREFIX=arm- \
     TARGET_PREFIX=$HOME/target/usr \
     TARGET_RUN_PREFIX=/usr \
     install

* {{PREFIX}} gives the place where the "cross chicken" should be installed
into. It is recommended not to install into a standard location (like {{/usr/local}}
or {{$HOME}}) - some files will conflict with a normal CHICKEN installation.

* {{TARGETSYSTEM}} gives the name-prefix of the cross C compiler.

* {{PROGRAM_PREFIX}} determines the name-prefix of the CHICKEN tools to be created.

* {{TARGET_PREFIX}} specifies where the target-specific files (libraries and
headers) are located. This is the location where we installed the runtime
system into.

* {{TARGET_RUN_PREFIX}} holds the PREFIX that will be effective at runtime
(so {{libchicken.so}} will be found in {{$TARGET_RUN_PREFIX/lib}}).

* Make sure to use the same version of the CHICKEN sources for the target and
the cross build.

* If you build the cross chicken from repository sources, the same note
about the {{CHICKEN}} variable applies as given above.

In {{~/cross-chicken}}, you should find the following:

To make sure that the right C compiler is used, we ask {{arm-csc}} to show
the name of the cross C compiler:

% ~/cross-chicken/arm-csc -cc-name
  arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc

Looks good.

=== Using it

==== Compiling simple programs

% ~/cross-chicken/arm-csc -v hello.scm
  /home/felix/cross-chicken/arm-cross-chicken/bin/arm-chicken hello.scm -output-file hello.c -quiet
  arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc hello.c -o hello.o -c -fno-strict-aliasing -DHAVE_CHICKEN_CONFIG_H -g -Wall \
    -Wno-unused -I /home/felix/cross-chicken/arm-chicken/include
  rm hello.c
  arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc hello.o -o hello -L/home/felix/cross-chicken/arm-chicken/lib  -Wl,-R/usr/lib -lm \
    -ldl -lchicken
  rm hello.o

Is it an ARM binary?

% file hello
  hello: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.16, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped

Yes, looks good.

==== Compiling extensions

By default, the tools that CHICKEN provides to install, list and uninstall
extensions will operate on both the host and the target repository.
So running {{arm-chicken-install}} will compile and install the extension 
for the host system and for the cross-target. To selectively install, uninstall
or list extensions for either the host or the target system use the
{{-host}} and {{-target}} options for the tools.

=== "Target-only" extensions

Sometimes an extension will only be compilable for the target platform
(for example libraries that use system-dependent features). In this
case you will have to work around the problem that the host-compiler
still may need compile-time information from the target-only
extension, like the import library of modules. One option is to copy
the import-library into the repository of the host compiler:

# optionally, you can compile the import library:
 # ~/cross-chicken/arm-csc -O3 -d0 -s target-only-extension.import.scm
 cp target-only-extension.import.scm ~/cross-chicken/lib/chicken/6

=== Final notes

Cross-development is a very tricky process - it often involves countless
manual steps and it is very easy to forget an important detail or mix
up target and host systems. Also, full 100% platform neutrality is
hard to achieve. CHICKEN tries very hard to make this transparent, but
at the price of considerable complexity in the code that manages
extensions.

----
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Next: [[Data representation]]

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