I have been tasked to recreate my company's development environment for our device line that utilizes the AM3359 processor. Our current environment is fairly dated, and we're running into compatibility issues. This development environment was set up long before I arrived at the company, so I apologize if I have a hard time answering any follow up questions. This is not my area of expertise. Mainly just want guidance from those with more knowledge than me with recreating/updating this environment for the future.
Some info on our current environment:
Machine: Linux VM
Linux OS: 14.04 32-bit LTS
SDK Version: AM335x SDK 08.00.00.00
Qt Version: 4.8.0
Issues I've Had Recreating/Updating Environment
I've tried recreating this development environment on a new VM, but one of the larger issues in the way is that Qt no longer appears to support the 32-bit version from their download archives. I tried recreating this environment running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS instead, but ran into a slew of build errors when trying to configure Qt for the SDK despite installing the 32-bit library helpers beforehand. If I would have to build Qt for the 32-bit OS myself to get it running, it almost seems like it'd just be better to bite the bullet and update to the new SDK/Qt versions on an updated OS if possible.
Regardless, it seems the larger issue is that the environment has not been maintained over the years. The SDK is very old, the Qt version is very old. It would appear that the solution to avoid another situation like this in the future would be to update the environment, with an updated Ubuntu distribution, SDK, and Qt. However, when I tried this, I noticed that the new SDK v08.02.00.24 installer no longer creates the same file tree that the 08.00.00.00 version did. For example, below are some of the file paths we relied on in our current development environment setup:
- <SDK_folder>/linux-devkit/sysroots/i686-arago-linux
- <SDK_folder>/targetNFS/usr/share/qtopia
My main concerns are:
- will using this new SDK to set up and compile our Qt application that runs on our device require an updated kernel on the device? Or will the old linux kernel/OS on the device still work when using the new SDK on the development environment?
- Are there any changes that using the new SDK will force us to change about the SD card storing our linux and QT application at all?
- What happened to folders such as targetNFS/usr/share/qtopia/mkspecs/qws? or the linux-devkit/sysroots/i686-arago-linux folder and its subdirectories? Were they reorganized or removed entirely?
