What causes sysdeps/mips/preconfigure to be sourced?

[Bryan Ischo <bryan at ischo dot com>]

Hi all.  I'm trying to build a mips cross compiler on an x86_64 build 
system, and I am running into an error; I've investigated as far as I 
can but am at a loss to understand how the configure process is supposed 
to work in this scenario.

I am using these arguments to glibc configure:

CFLAGS='-mips32 -mtune=5kf -mbranch-likely -Wa,--trap -O2'
--build=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
--host=mips-unknown-linux-gnu
--prefix=/home/bji/buildtools/output/install/stage1/mips-unknown-linux-gnu/usr
--with-headers=/home/bji/buildtools/output/sources/kernel/mips
--disable-shared
--disable-executables

(--disable-executables is an addition that I have made to the glibc 
configure and Makefiles to disable the building of any executables; this 
allows a multi-stage bootstrapping of gcc and glibc to proceed using a 
simpler and (I believe) more logical process than other bootstrapping 
procedures I have read about)

In file included from ../sysdeps/mips/libc-tls.c:20:0:
../csu/libc-tls.c: In function '__libc_setup_tls':
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:3: warning: implicit declaration of function 
'INTERNAL_SYSCALL_DECL' [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:25: error: 'err' undeclared (first use in this 
function)
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:25: note: each undeclared identifier is reported 
only once for each function it appears in
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:3: warning: implicit declaration of function 
'INTERNAL_SYSCALL' [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:25: error: 'set_thread_area' undeclared (first use 
in this function)
../csu/libc-tls.c:194:3: warning: implicit declaration of function 
'INTERNAL_SYSCALL_ERROR_P' [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
make[2]: *** 
[/home/bji/buildtools/output/build/stage1/mips-TiVo-linux-gnu/glibc/csu/libc-tls.o] 
Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/bji/buildtools/output/sources/glibc/csu'
make[1]: *** [csu/subdir_lib] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/bji/buildtools/output/sources/glibc'

INTERNAL_SYSCALL_DECL is undefined; it should be being pulled in, I 
believe, from this glibc source file:

sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/mips/mips32/sysdep.h

This header file is not being included.  I don't understand why not.

I believe that this header file is included if the configure script 
detects that the mips32 sysdeps should be included.  I haven't found any 
logic in the configure script that would cause mips32 to be included; 
but I have found this file which looks like it would cause mips32 to be 
included:

sysdeps/mips/preconfigure

This script very clearly looks like it establishes mips32 in the set of 
machine types to use when detecting sysdeps to use.

However, this script is not being sourced by the configure script for glibc.

How do I get this script to be sourced by glibc's configure script?  I 
notice that there is logic surrounding a variable named "$libc_add_on" 
but I don't understand how to make that variable work.  The configure 
script looks like it wants to find preconfigure scripts at:

$srcdir/$libc_add_on/sysdeps/*/preconfigure

but that won't find a preconfigure script at:

$srcdir/sysdeps/mips/preconfigure

In fact I grep'd every file in the glibc source distribution for the 
word 'preconfigure' but this use in the configure script is the only 
place I can even see it being referenced.

I should mention that I am trying to build glibc version 2.13 with 
glibc-ports-2.13.

Thanks!
Bryan