Trouble cross-compiling

[makew0rld]

On this line, the compilation of this package is configured. If the --host parameter could be specified, then I would be able to cross compile the package.

For example, the line could read something like:

  spawn('./configure', ['--prefix=' + tmp, '--host=' + host], { cwd: __dirname, stdio: 'inherit' }, function (err) {

When I tried this with --host=arm-linux-gnueabihf, to compile for the armhf arch (with this debian pkg installed), the compiling of libsodium worked, but the overall installation failed on a make related step. Here's the log:

make[1]: Leaving directory '/root/sodium-native/libsodium'
make: Entering directory '/root/sodium-native/build'
  CC(target) Release/obj.target/sodium/binding.o
  SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/sodium.node
/usr/bin/ld: /root/sodium-native/lib/libsodium-x64.so: error adding symbols: file in wrong format
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [sodium.target.mk:149: Release/obj.target/sodium.node] Error 1
make: Leaving directory '/root/sodium-native/build'
gyp ERR! build error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: `make` failed with exit code: 2
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onExit (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/build.js:194:23)
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:310:20)
gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:275:12)
gyp ERR! System Linux 5.5.13-arch2-1
gyp ERR! command "/usr/bin/node" "/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd /root/sodium-native
gyp ERR! node -v v12.16.2
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v5.1.0
gyp ERR! not ok 
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! sodium-native@3.0.1 install: `node-gyp-build "node preinstall.js" "node postinstall.js"`
npm ERR! Exit status 1

I believe this is happening because /usr/bin/ld is used, instead of arm-linux-gnueabihf-ld. I realize this may be out of scope for this repo, but I've seen other issues like #119 mention compiling for platforms like Android, and so I'm wondering if the maintainers here would know how to fix this issue.

How can I tell make to use the correct linker, and probably the correct version of other tools?

[emilbayes]

This is because the preinstall.js script first compiles libsodium as a shared library. We'd have to work out how to make libsodium cross compile also then :)

[emilbayes]

I guess you could probably try this already now: https://doc.libsodium.org/installation#cross-compiling

[emilbayes]

Ah sorry, rereading above, it's node-gyp that you'd need to mess around with. We've tried a couple of times without luck, which is why we manually build armv7l on each release

[makew0rld]

Yeah, the cross compiling of libsodium works fine, it's the linking of this repo that causes issues.

How are you building those releases? Thanks for quick reply.

[emilbayes]

We build them on actual hardware

[makew0rld]

Do you think it'd be possible for you guys to build arm64, armel releases as well?

[emilbayes]

We don't have the hardware unfortunately. armv7l is only because we support a number of production systems running on RPis

[makew0rld]

Alright, thanks anyway. I and some others have been looking into using qemu to emulate the arches we want, and compiling there.

[mafintosh]

If you figure it out, let us know :)

[makew0rld]

If you want to follow this issue that might be worthwhile. Also checkout some scripts that are linked there, we're testing them for Raspberry Pi compiling right now. I will try to update here as well once a general solution has been found.

[emilbayes]

We have had luck with qemu in the past, it was just prohibitively slow

[kasperisager]

This should be solved by #174 and #175.