NeTV local compilation

Compatibility

This documentation is verified at version 12 firmware.

NeTV includes the abilities to download packages that are pre-compiled from the chumby release servers.

To do local development, you will use this facility to install gcc.

Preparing the device

First, connect to the network using the NeTV UI. Once you are connected to the network, ssh into the device.

Then, execute this series of commands to create a unionfs that unlocks the free space on the microSD card:

 mkdir /tmp/roroot
 mount / /tmp/roroot -o bind 
 mkdir /tmp/unionroot
 mkdir /media/storage/newroot
 mount -w -t unionfs -o dirs=/media/storage/newroot=rw:/tmp/roroot=ro unionfs /tmp/unionroot 
 mount /var/volatile /tmp/unionroot/var/volatile -o bind
 chroot /tmp/unionroot /bin/bash
 mount -a
 mkdir /dev/pts
 mkdir /dev/shm
 mount devpts /dev/pts -t devpts
 mount tmpfs /dev/shm -t tmpfs -o rw,mode=777

Finally, download and install the package to the new unionfs root:

 opkg update
 opkg install task-sdk-native
 opkg install libgcc-dev

This process will download all of the files, headers, and executables required to do C development. It takes a while, maybe a half hour or so. It's recommended to kill the NeTVBrowser and NeTVServer before running this to free up RAM.

Once this process is done, you can now use gcc:

gcc -o hello hello.c
./hello
Hello, world!

The total space consumed by the toolchain is currently around 380 MB.

Important note: every time the device is rebooted, you need to re-do the unionfs. You do not need to re-install the toolchain, as it is already there, but you do need to chroot into the unionroot.