[Peeweelinux] newbie question

[Barry Gershenfeld]

>Does my development machine have to be 6.2?  

The short answer is "yes".  A slightly longer answer is, "no, if
you do not need to modify anything".

>Any conflicts in going with a newer version of Linux (8.0 
>in particular).  The USB support under 6.2 is a real PITA.

Well, here's the long story.  Assuming you don't run afoul
of rpm (I've seen messages to this effect), you can set up
and use a PeeWee system on a newer distro.  My own dev
environment is run under RH 7.3

Everything is fine until you want to add your own programs
or build a new kernel.  You clearly want USB so you are
going to need a version 2.4 kernel.   We do have a sort
of HowTo in the archives for doing that.  As usual, you
have to use the older version of gcc to build it.  Then
you maneuver the resulting kernel into the right place
so PWL will build it into your system.

That's reasonably cool because the kernel is in effect a
statically linked program.

But I bet you will need some other utilities to use with
the USB.  When you compile new programs, you have these
choices:
 - Statically link everthing so it doesn't care what
   version libraries are present on the target. 
 - Build them dynamic and arrange to also install the
   necessary libraries along with the programs.  And
   hope the two lib versions don't get confused.
 - Get a RH6.2 system, build them there, then bring
   the results over to your normal development system
   and turn PWL loose on them.

I did that last one in order to build the latest PHP engine.

My experience is that you can start by building targets, and
"grow into" the more involved stuff as you go along and need
to do more special things.

Hope this provides some elightenment.

Barry