Is it possible to use two different versions of same package in buildroot?

Question

Currently used packages in my system are..

buildroot-2011.02

libpng-1.4.5

autoconf-2.65

python-2.7.1

I am trying to upgrade Libpng from version-1.4.5 to version-1.6.8.

But the newer version of Libpng requires Autoconf 2.68 or higher.

If I update Autoconf to 2.68, Python 2.7.1 fails which requires older version of Autoconf.

So I have to update Python to higher version which supports Autoconf 2.68.

But this is creating whole lot of problems for me because Python is used in many other modules which also fails to build.

Other solution I could think is keeping both versions of Autoconf i.e. 2.68 and 2.65 and I have to make sure Libpng uses Autoconf 2.68 and Python uses Autoconf 2.65.

Is it possible to do this? Is there any alternate solution to this problem?

Answer 1

Please try the newest Buildroot version and use BR2_EXTERNAL feature. This way you'll keep your own packages/configuration separately from BR tree. So you can update BR whenever you like and your stuff still will be working.

mkdir /home/user/my_bsp
cd /home/user/
git clone git://git.buildroot.net/buildroot
cd buildroot
make BR2_EXTERNAL=/home/user/my_bsp help

Now your BR tree will be looking for configuration and packages in /home/user/my_bsp