Depends system refuses to use custom toolchain for x86 #7033

I have created a custom x86 toolchain using crosstool-ng, however I don't know how to use it with depends. E.g. this doesn't work:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/x-tools/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
# contains x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc, g++ etc
make HOST=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

However when looking at the output of e.g. OpenSSL build it is using the system-wide gcc:

...
gcc -m64 -I.. -I../.. -I../modes -I../asn1 -I../evp -I../../include  -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -pipe -O2 -I/home/user/bitcoin-x86_64/depends/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/include -fPIC -Wa,--noexecstack -m64 -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -O3 -Wall -DOPENSSL_IA32_SSE2 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT5 -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DMD5_ASM -DAES_ASM -DVPAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM   -c -o randfile.o randfile.c

Is there any specific trick I need to use, or an option I can override? (I guess I can trick it by removing the prefix from my toolchain so that it names them gcc etc, but I'd be afraid it mixes with the system compiler/bintools)

See this line of funcs.mk. It sets $(package)_type to x86_64_linux in the case of your example, the same as if you left out the unknown from the HOST. So you want to look for what depends is setting x86_64_linux_CC to.

See depends/hosts/linux.mk. Assuming 86 is found in $(build_arch), then x86_64_linux_CC is just set to gcc -m64. It is only if you are building on a system without 86 somewhere in the arch (like arm) that the prefix is added to gcc.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but as depends works currently, it would seem like you would need to do the prefix removal to use that toolchain without modifying depends.

Thanks for trying to look it up @josephbisch Didn't find anything better than 'rename your compilers' either.

I do think we need such a mechanism in depends, to be able to use a 'blessed toolchain' instead of a VM/chroot for determinism.

@laanwj Is this issue still relevant?

Closing. No response in 1 year.

I think it's still an issue, but no longer for me as I'm no longer working on whatever I was back then, so I'm fine with leaving this closed.

(github e-mail is very unreliable for me, if you want to bring something to my attention preferably use IRC)