Prerequisites for building crosstool-NG and tool chains

[Rod Nussbaumer <bomr at triumf dot ca>]

I am trying to use a couple of different Redhat (EL4.x & EL5.x) 
platforms for running crosstool-NG (trying 1.4.1, and 1.5.1). Running 
'configure --local' produces problems with (at least) bash and automake 
version requirements.
Are the minimum requirements set forth in 'configure' actual hard 
requirements, or can I relax the requirements and still get a successful 
 build? It is difficult for me to upgrade system tools on an ad-hoc 
basis, as these hosts must be kept in a state that is well understood 
and easily restorable. Changes to basic distribution configurations are 
strongly discouraged.
On a similar note, is there a preferred host distribution platform for 
running crosstool-NG? As an experiment recently, I found that on a 
recent distribution of Open Suse, I was able to install and run 
crosstool-NG without updating anything on the host. I haven't tried the 
built toolchain yet, but at least I was able to create one without headache.
Has anyone used a distro installed as a virtual OS, simply as a host 
system for running crosstool-NG? What configuration did you use? How 
successful/easy/difficult was it?
My present target architectures are ARM (for TS-7350 SBC), and x86 (for 
VME based Pentium CPUs). Anyone have a working .config file for either 
of these target platforms?
Is there any intention that older releases of crosstool-NG should 
continue to work? I found that one 1.4.X version that I had previously 
used would no longer build a toolchain, because it could not download a 
source package from the net. Is this an expected behavior, or should I 
expect the download problem to be a temporary network issue?

Thanks to Yann, and to everyone else who has contributed to this 
valuable tool.

   ---   rod.


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