Cross-build Debian Packages for mips64el Architecture

In this post, I will show how to cross-build an example Debian package, sl, for mips64el architecture on a amd64 host machine.

1 Install Prerequisites

On the host machine, install essential build tools for both amd64 host and mips64el target.

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$ sudo apt install crossbuild-essential-mips64el build-essential

2 Configure Signing Key

TBD

3 Configure deb-src

By default, Debian may not include working deb-src sources in sources.list. In order to download the source code for a package, you need to first manually add (or uncomment) deb-srcs. 

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$ sudo apt edit-sources  # edit sources

You will see a text editor. If there are commented deb-srcs, uncomment them. If there are no deb-srcs at all, copy the deb lines, duplicate them, and change debs to deb-srcs in the duplicated lines. The following configuration is a valid example sources.list with deb-srcs.

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deb http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian buster main
deb-src http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian buster main

deb http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian-security buster/updates main
deb-src http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian-security buster/updates main

deb http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian buster-updates main
deb-src http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian buster-updates main

You then need to update list of packages on the host.

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$ sudo apt update

4 Prepare the Source Code and Build Dependencies for the Target Package

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$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture mips64el # add mips64el architecture for build deps
$ sudo apt update                       # update list of packages
$ apt source sl                         # fetch the source code of sl
$ sudo apt-get build-dep -a mips64el sl # install build deps for sl

To build other packages, just replace sl with any other package name.

5 Build!

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$ cd sl-5.02
$ CONFIG_SITE=/etc/dpkg-cross/cross-config.mips64el   DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nocheck dpkg-buildpackage -a mips64el -Pcross,nocheck
$ cd ..

If you don’t want to sign the package, add -us -uc flags after dpkg-buildpackage.

Then we get a nice sl_5.02-1_mips64el.deb package.

6 Upload the Package to the Target Machine and Run

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$ scp sl_5.02-1_mips64el.deb 192.168.1.149: # copy the package to the target machine 192.168.1.149
$ ssh 192.168.1.149
> sudo dpkg -i sl_5.02-1_mips64el.deb       # install the package on the target machine
> sl

image-20200528153816715

Voilà! You have a working sl running on mips64el target.

Reference

https://wiki.debian.org/CrossCompiling