Hi,
We can't do that. libosmocore subtree is still used to compile the embedded ARM version of libosmocore.
I think we should change that, and instead require the ARM library to be installed into a prefix which is set when building osmocom-bb targets. A sane default could be to have the prefix next to the osmocom-bb source tree.
We don't have an OS on the ARM, no libraries, no BSP ... it's all a big static block, so we can't have an installed "ARM library" for it.
So we could ask the user to have the sources somewhere, but the issue is that the ARM build is much more sensitive to libosmocore version than the host one.
I don't really see the problem with having the libosmocore as subtree for ARM build. For the host, it would sometime mix the intree and installed versions during build and we also had to update it often, but the subset used in the ARM is pretty small and doesn't require much updates.
Cheers,
Sylvain