Index: BOOK/cross-tools/common/file.xml
===================================================================
--- BOOK/cross-tools/common/file.xml (revision 7481f2d0da8de41be23482bd8c990c8a41427ca4)
+++ BOOK/cross-tools/common/file.xml (revision 3a4cb539568042a5a10645493e1d1fb17ef7fdd9)
@@ -23,6 +23,14 @@
Installation of File
- Here we install a native file program that can run
- on the host system, as this program is needed by Binutils.
+ One method that file uses for identifying a given
+ file is to run magic tests
, where it compares the file's
+ contents to data in magic files
, which contain information
+ about a number of standard file formats. When File is compiled, it will run
+ file -C to combine the information from the
+ magic files in its source tree into a single magic.mgc
+ file, which it will use after it is installed. When we build File in
+ , it will be cross-compiled, so it
+ will not be able to run the file program that it just
+ built, which means that we need one that will run on the host system.
Prepare File for compilation: