Cross Compiling libavg for ARM

libavg is a high-level development platform for media-centric applications using Python as scripting language and written in C++.

Bear in mind that are many dependencies with libavg 1.6. I have not built all the libraries required, but instead simply taken the pre-built binaries and header files in the qemu overo image and copied the files as follows:

mkdir mnt
sudo mount -o loop,offset=$[106496*512] overo_sd_alip.img mnt
mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib -p
mkdir ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include
cp mnt/usr/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d
cp mnt/lib/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/ -rf -d
cp /mnt/usr/include/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -rf -d
sudo umount mnt

The -d flag skips the symlink, so we need to recreate then for all library so that the compiler can find libname.so instead of libname.so.12. Save the following scripts to symlinks.sh:

#!/bin/sh
liblist=`ls *.so.??`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done
liblist=`ls *.so.?`
for f in $liblist
do
  echo $f
  fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`
  ln -s $f $fileres
done

#!/bin/sh

liblist=`ls *.so.??`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{2\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

liblist=`ls *.so.?`

for f in $liblist

echo $f

fileres=`echo $f | sed 's/\..\{1\}$//'`

ln -s $f $fileres

done

and run it where the arm libraries are located (in my case in /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib, /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi and /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/mesa). This will create symlinks for most libraries, but not all. Some will still have to be created manually, e.g.:

ln -s libboost_thread.so.1.42.0 libboost_thread.so
ln -s libcrypto.so.0.9.8 libcrypto.so
ln -s libssl.so.0.9.8 libssl.so

Also delete the symlink between libjpeg.so and libjpeg.so.8 since we use another version of the library.

If a symlink is missing, we would generally get a warning of the type:

/usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabi/4.6.1/../../../../arm-linux-gnueabi/bin/ld: warning: libGL.so.1, needed by /home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/libGLU.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link)

Once this is done, here are the instructions to cross-compile libavg 1.6 for ARM:

First build and install MesaLib for ARM (version 7.9.2), as the default Mesa/OpenGL library in the qemu image has more dependencies.
Download libavg 1.6 source code

wget http://www.libavg.de/raw-attachment/wiki/DownLoad/libavg-1.6.0.tar.gz
Extract it

tar xzvf libavg-1.6.0.tar.gz
cd libavg-1.6.0
Install the following development packages:

sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libpango1.0-dev libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libfaad-dev libgsm1-dev libogg-dev libschroedinger-dev libspeex-dev libswscale-dev libboost-dev libboost-thread-dev
Remove SSE2 options in configure script:

cat configure | sed s/-msse2// > configure.arm
mv configure.arm configure
chmod 755 configure
There is some x86 assembler in the code, we need to disable it.
Edit src/base/Exception.ccp and comment out the line:
asm(“int $3”);
To prevent testplayer from failing. Edit src/player/Makefile and make sure your replace occurences of -L/usr/include -lSDL, by -L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib and create a symlink for the SDL library:

ln -s libSDL-1.2.so libSDL.so

You may also need to edit the Makefile as above for src/anim and src/wrapper
Configure, build and install libavg:

LDFLAGS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib \
-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/mesa \
-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi -lGL -lX11 \
-lXext -lc  -lxcb -lXau -lXdmcp -lz -llcms -ltiff -lfreetype -ljasper -ljpeg \
-lpng12 -lwmflite-0.2 -lltdl -lSM -lICE -lbz2 -luuid -lva -lgsm -lspeex \
-ltheoradec -ltheoraenc -lvorbis -lvorbisenc -lschroedinger-1.0 -lorc-0.4 \
-lvpx -logg -lpython2.7 -lcrypto -lssl -lpulse-simple -lpulse \
-lpulsecommon-0.9.22 -lX11-xcb -lXtst -lxcb-atom -ldbus-1 -lwrap -lsndfile \
-lFLAC -ldl -lm -lexpat -lpcre" \
CFLAGS="-I/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -I/usr/include"  \
CXXFLAGS="-I/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -I/usr/include" \
./configure --target=arm-linux-gnueabi --host=arm-linux-gnueabi \
--prefix=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs \
--includedir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include/ \
BOOST_PYTHON_LIBS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi" \
--disable-v4l2 --disable-dc1394 --disable-sdltest
make
make install

LDFLAGS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib \

-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/mesa \

-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi -lGL -lX11 \

-lXext -lc -lxcb -lXau -lXdmcp -lz -llcms -ltiff -lfreetype -ljasper -ljpeg \

-lpng12 -lwmflite-0.2 -lltdl -lSM -lICE -lbz2 -luuid -lva -lgsm -lspeex \

-ltheoradec -ltheoraenc -lvorbis -lvorbisenc -lschroedinger-1.0 -lorc-0.4 \

-lvpx -logg -lpython2.7 -lcrypto -lssl -lpulse-simple -lpulse \

-lpulsecommon-0.9.22 -lX11-xcb -lXtst -lxcb-atom -ldbus-1 -lwrap -lsndfile \

-lFLAC -ldl -lm -lexpat -lpcre" \

CFLAGS="-I/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -I/usr/include" \

CXXFLAGS="-I/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include -I/usr/include" \

./configure --target=arm-linux-gnueabi --host=arm-linux-gnueabi \

--prefix=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs \

--includedir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include/ \

BOOST_PYTHON_LIBS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi" \

--disable-v4l2 --disable-dc1394 --disable-sdltest

make

make install

This was tested in Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) with linaro gcc toolchain.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.