lfs-book/chapter04/creatingtoolsdir.xml

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<sect1 id="ch-tools-creatingtoolsdir">
  <?dbhtml filename="creatingtoolsdir.html"?>

  <title>Creating the $LFS/tools Directory</title>

  <para>All programs compiled in <xref linkend="chapter-temporary-tools"/>
  will be installed under <filename class="directory">$LFS/tools</filename>
  to keep them separate from the programs compiled in <xref
  linkend="chapter-building-system"/>. The programs compiled here are
  temporary tools and will not be a part of the final LFS system. By keeping
  these programs in a separate directory, they can easily be discarded later
  after their use. This also prevents these programs from ending up in the
  host production directories (easy to do by accident in <xref
  linkend="chapter-temporary-tools"/>).</para>

  <para>Create the required directory by running the following as
  <systemitem class="username">root</systemitem>:</para>

<screen><userinput>mkdir -v $LFS/tools</userinput></screen>

  <para>The next step is to create a <filename class="symlink">/tools</filename>
  symlink on the host system. This will point to the newly-created directory on
  the LFS partition. Run this command as <systemitem
  class="username">root</systemitem> as well:</para>

<screen><userinput>ln -sv $LFS/tools /</userinput></screen>

  <note>
    <para>The above command is correct. The <command>ln</command> command
    has a few syntactic variations, so be sure to check
    <command>info coreutils ln</command> and <filename>ln(1)</filename>
    before reporting what you may think is an error.</para>
  </note>

  <para>The created symlink enables the toolchain to be compiled so that it
  always refers to <filename class="directory">/tools</filename>, meaning
  that the compiler, assembler, and linker will work both in Chapter 5
  (when we are still using some tools from the host) and in the next (when
  we are <quote>chrooted</quote> to the LFS partition).</para>

</sect1>