The problem was that when the X libs are built, some libs need otherlibs to be installed - and for libXi, the required libXext wasn't always built for me. After some cleaning up of some non-working overhead (thanks to Bernd 'veego' Ernesti) and some shuffling of libs (by yours truly) things build reliably now:

...
make release started at:  Fri Dec 12 19:09:19 CET 2008
make release finished at: Fri Dec 12 20:45:15 CET 2008
===> Successful make release
===> build.sh ended:   Fri Dec 12 20:45:15 CET 2008
===> Summary of results:
         build.sh command: ./build.sh -x -X ../xsrc-5 -m i386 -u -N 2 -U -M obj.i386 [...]
         build.sh started: Fri Dec 12 19:09:18 CET 2008
         NetBSD version:   5.0_BETA
         MACHINE:          i386
         MACHINE_ARCH:     i386
         Build platform:   SunOS 5.10 i86pc
         HOST_SH:          /usr/xpg4/bin/sh
         TOOLDIR path:     /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/tooldir
         DESTDIR path:     /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/destdir
         RELEASEDIR path:  /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/releasedir
         makewrapper:      /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/tooldir/bin/nbmake-i386
         Updated /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/tooldir/bin/nbmake-i386
         Successful make release
         build.sh ended:   Fri Dec 12 20:45:15 CET 2008
===> .

real  1:35:58.0
user    53:23.4
sys     10:30.1

With this step, I consider my pet project of making NetBSD crosscompile-able from Solaris finished. The goal was to add Solaris as another platform for embedded development projects that use NetBSD as target operating system. The reason for the project was to make sure the development platform list does include Solaris, which I considere a worthy operating system for such a venture. In case someone cannot use NetBSD or Mac OS, of course. 8-)

[Tags: crosscompile, solaris]

The errors that I've stumbled across recently are all of the same sort: Syntax errors from sh, i.e. it breaks immediately while parsing the commands, not later while executing it. As such, tracing is a bit awkward. The core problem is that Solaris' shell trips over for-loops with no variables expanded:

	for foo in
	do ...

	for foo in ${MAKE_VAR}         \
	do ...

	shell_var="${MAKE_VAR}";       \
	for foo in $${shell_var};      \
	do ...

Now off to another build, and see where it fails next time! :-)

Update: In private, Jörg pointed out that Alan actually suggested a different solution than what I wrote here, i.e. using ${MAKE_VAR:Q} to quote any strange chars in the variable, instead of simply putting it into double quotes. This is e.g. important if the variable has values with `` which would be expanded in my case. For the case at hands -- NetBSD(:-) -- this doesn't make a difference.

After the change described above, NetBSD's base system and kernels can be cross compiled from Solaris (woot!). Only X is still struggling and after making sure NetBSD's (tool)awk is used instead of Solaris' native awk in one place, a "make build" in src/external/mit/xorg works, too. Right now I'm only seeing some strange errors when doing a full "build.sh -x", but I hope to have that going soon, too. Stay tuned!

[Tags: crosscompile, solaris]

He'd appreciate comments!

[Tags: crosscompile, distcc, pkgsrc]