= How to port Frugalware to a new architecture

== Introduction

This document is a draft about how to port Frugalware to a new architecture.

== Toolchain

* Install any existing distro to the given architecture. No matter what
kind of it, but make sure you install the normal development tools like
header files, gcc, make, etc.

* Compile from source (based on the FrugalBuilds) our development
tools like pacman-g2, pacman-tools (+ deps: libarchive, etc if they are
not available.)

* Build a minimal toolchain: binutils, gcc, glibc (in this order)
  outside chroot, with dep checking disabled (makepkg -dHcu).

* Build packages which are necessary to build in chroot: see the
  COREPKGS variable in /etc/makepkg.conf (same makepkg switches).

Given that repoman won't allow you to upload which are not built in
chroot, here is a simple script to upload and register then till you
don't have a chroot:

----
#!/bin/sh
scp *.fpm genesis:git/current/frugalware-NEWARCH
pkgname=$(pwd|sed 's|.*/||')
ssh genesis "cd git/current/frugalware-NEWARCH; arch=NEWARCH updatesync upd frugalware-current.fdb ../source/*/$pkgname/FrugalBuild"
----

Replace genesis with the server name and git/current with an other path
if you don't have such a symlink in your HOME.

Now you can start building in chroot and uploading real packages.

NOTE: Yes, this means that you have to build the toolchain twice. Also
known as 'bootstrapping'.

== Base system

You should start porting with packages from the 'base' category, once
you are done with it, you should be able to install (manually) a
bootable system, after manually configuring a boot manager.

== The rest

That depends on your needs, you can port additional packages as well.