Yocto Project Reference Manual

Essentials: Packages needed to build an image on a headless system:

     $ sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib \
     build-essential chrpath socat cpio python python3 python3-pip python3-pexpect \
     xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping
                        

Graphical and Eclipse Plug-In Extras: Packages recommended if the host system has graphics support or if you are going to use the Eclipse IDE:

     $ sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev xterm
                        

Documentation: Packages needed if you are going to build out the Yocto Project documentation manuals:

     $ sudo apt-get install make xsltproc docbook-utils fop dblatex xmlto
                        

OpenEmbedded Self-Test (oe-selftest): Packages needed if you are going to run oe-selftest:

     $ sudo apt-get install python-git
                        

Essentials: Packages needed to build an image for a headless system:

     $ sudo dnf install gawk make wget tar bzip2 gzip python3 unzip perl patch \
     diffutils diffstat git cpp gcc gcc-c++ glibc-devel texinfo chrpath \
     ccache perl-Data-Dumper perl-Text-ParseWords perl-Thread-Queue perl-bignum socat \
     python3-pexpect findutils which file cpio python python3-pip xz
                        

Graphical and Eclipse Plug-In Extras: Packages recommended if the host system has graphics support or if you are going to use the Eclipse IDE:

     $ sudo dnf install SDL-devel xterm
                        

Documentation: Packages needed if you are going to build out the Yocto Project documentation manuals:

     $ sudo dnf install make docbook-style-dsssl docbook-style-xsl \
     docbook-dtds docbook-utils fop libxslt dblatex xmlto
                        

OpenEmbedded Self-Test (oe-selftest): Packages needed if you are going to run oe-selftest:

     $ sudo dnf install python3-GitPython
                        

Essentials: Packages needed to build an image for a headless system:

     $ sudo zypper install python gcc gcc-c++ git chrpath make wget python-xml \
     diffstat makeinfo python-curses patch socat python3 python3-curses tar python3-pip \
     python3-pexpect xz which
                        

Graphical and Eclipse Plug-In Extras: Packages recommended if the host system has graphics support or if you are going to use the Eclipse IDE:

     $ sudo zypper install libSDL-devel xterm
                        

Documentation: Packages needed if you are going to build out the Yocto Project documentation manuals:

     $ sudo zypper install make dblatex xmlto
                        

OpenEmbedded Self-Test (oe-selftest): Packages needed if you are going to run oe-selftest:

     $ sudo zypper install python-GitPython
                        

Essentials: Packages needed to build an image for a headless system:

     $ sudo yum install -y epel-release
     $ sudo yum makecache
     $ sudo yum install gawk make wget tar bzip2 gzip python unzip perl patch \
     diffutils diffstat git cpp gcc gcc-c++ glibc-devel texinfo chrpath socat \
     perl-Data-Dumper perl-Text-ParseWords perl-Thread-Queue python34-pip xz \
     which SDL-devel xterm
                        

Graphical and Eclipse Plug-In Extras: Packages recommended if the host system has graphics support or if you are going to use the Eclipse IDE:

     $ sudo yum install SDL-devel xterm
                        

Documentation: Packages needed if you are going to build out the Yocto Project documentation manuals:

     $ sudo yum install make docbook-style-dsssl docbook-style-xsl \
     docbook-dtds docbook-utils fop libxslt dblatex xmlto
                        

OpenEmbedded Self-Test (oe-selftest): Packages needed if you are going to run oe-selftest:

     $ sudo yum install GitPython
                        

Python function whitespace

proto= in SRC_URI

nativesdk

Task recipes

IMAGE_FEATURES

Removed recipes

Comment Continuation: If a comment ends with a line continuation (\) character, then the next line must also be a comment. Any instance where this is not the case, now triggers a warning. You must either remove the continuation character, or be sure the next line is a comment.

Package Name Overrides: The runtime package specific variables RDEPENDS, RRECOMMENDS, RSUGGESTS, RPROVIDES, RCONFLICTS, RREPLACES, FILES, ALLOW_EMPTY, and the pre, post, install, and uninstall script functions pkg_preinst, pkg_postinst, pkg_prerm, and pkg_postrm should always have a package name override. For example, use RDEPENDS_${PN} for the main package instead of RDEPENDS. BitBake uses more strict checks when it parses recipes.

Shared State Code: The shared state code has been optimized to avoid running unnecessary tasks. For example, the following no longer populates the target sysroot since that is not necessary:

     $ bitbake -c rootfs some-image
                    

Instead, the system just needs to extract the output package contents, re-create the packages, and construct the root filesystem. This change is unlikely to cause any problems unless you have missing declared dependencies.

Scanning Directory Names: When scanning for files in SRC_URI, the build system now uses FILESOVERRIDES instead of OVERRIDES for the directory names. In general, the values previously in OVERRIDES are now in FILESOVERRIDES as well. However, if you relied upon an additional value you previously added to OVERRIDES, you might now need to add it to FILESOVERRIDES unless you are already adding it through the MACHINEOVERRIDES or DISTROOVERRIDES variables, as appropriate. For more related changes, see the "Variables" section.

SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS: This variable now uses a distribution ID, which is composed of the host distributor ID followed by the release. Previously, SANITY_TESTED_DISTROS was composed of the description field. For example, "Ubuntu 12.10" becomes "Ubuntu-12.10". You do not need to worry about this change if you are not specifically setting this variable, or if you are specifically setting it to "".

SRC_URI: The ${PN}, ${PF}, ${P}, and FILE_DIRNAME directories have been dropped from the default value of the FILESPATH variable, which is used as the search path for finding files referred to in SRC_URI. If you have a recipe that relied upon these directories, which would be unusual, then you will need to add the appropriate paths within the recipe or, alternatively, rearrange the files. The most common locations are still covered by ${BP}, ${BPN}, and "files", which all remain in the default value of FILESPATH.

clutter-box2d: Now resides in the meta-oe layer.

evolution-data-server: Now resides in the meta-gnome layer.

gthumb: Now resides in the meta-gnome layer.

gtkhtml2: Now resides in the meta-oe layer.

gupnp: Now resides in the meta-multimedia layer.

gypsy: Now resides in the meta-oe layer.

libcanberra: Now resides in the meta-gnome layer.

libgdata: Now resides in the meta-gnome layer.

libmusicbrainz: Now resides in the meta-multimedia layer.

metacity: Now resides in the meta-gnome layer.

polkit: Now resides in the meta-oe layer.

zeroconf: Now resides in the meta-networking layer.

evieext: Removed because it has been removed from xserver since 2008.

Gtk+ DirectFB: Removed support because upstream Gtk+ no longer supports it as of version 2.18.

libxfontcache / xfontcacheproto: Removed because they were removed from the Xorg server in 2008.

libxp / libxprintapputil / libxprintutil / printproto: Removed because the XPrint server was removed from Xorg in 2008.

libxtrap / xtrapproto: Removed because their functionality was broken upstream.

linux-yocto 3.0 kernel: Removed with linux-yocto 3.8 kernel being added. The linux-yocto 3.2 and linux-yocto 3.4 kernels remain as part of the release.

lsbsetup: Removed with functionality now provided by lsbtest.

matchbox-stroke: Removed because it was never more than a proof-of-concept.

matchbox-wm-2 / matchbox-theme-sato-2: Removed because they are not maintained. However, matchbox-wm and matchbox-theme-sato are still provided.

mesa-dri: Renamed to mesa.

mesa-xlib: Removed because it was no longer useful.

mutter: Removed because nothing ever uses it and the recipe is very old.

orinoco-conf: Removed because it has become obsolete.

update-modules: Removed because it is no longer used. The kernel module postinstall and postrm scripts can now do the same task without the use of this script.

web: Removed because it is not maintained. Superseded by web-webkit.

xf86bigfontproto: Removed because upstream it has been disabled by default since 2007. Nothing uses xf86bigfontproto.

xf86rushproto: Removed because its dependency in xserver was spurious and it was removed in 2005.

zypper / libzypp / sat-solver: Removed and been functionally replaced with Smart (python-smartpm) when RPM packaging is used and package management is enabled on the target.

Python 2.7.3+

Tar 1.24+

Git 1.7.8+

Patched version of Make if you are using 3.82. Most distributions that provide Make 3.82 use the patched version.

BitBake now supports a _remove operator. The addition of this operator means you will have to rename any items in recipe space (functions, variables) whose names currently contain _remove_ or end with _remove to avoid unexpected behavior.

BitBake's global method pool has been removed. This method is not particularly useful and led to clashes between recipes containing functions that had the same name.

The "none" server backend has been removed. The "process" server backend has been serving well as the default for a long time now.

The bitbake-runtask script has been removed.

${P} and ${PF} are no longer added to PROVIDES by default in bitbake.conf. These version-specific PROVIDES items were seldom used. Attempting to use them could result in two versions being built simultaneously rather than just one version due to the way BitBake resolves dependencies.

If you have customized ERROR_QA or WARN_QA values in your configuration, check that they contain all of the issues that you wish to be reported. Previous Yocto Project versions contained a bug that meant that any item not mentioned in ERROR_QA or WARN_QA would be treated as a warning. Consequently, several important items were not already in the default value of WARN_QA. All of the possible QA checks are now documented in the "insane.bbclass" section.

An additional QA check has been added to check if /usr/share/info/dir is being installed. Your recipe should delete this file within do_install if "make install" is installing it.

If you are using the buildhistory class, the check for the package version going backwards is now controlled using a standard QA check. Thus, if you have customized your ERROR_QA or WARN_QA values and still wish to have this check performed, you should add "version-going-backwards" to your value for one or the other variables depending on how you wish it to be handled. See the documented QA checks in the "insane.bbclass" section.

Output SDK installer files are now named to include the image name and tuning architecture through the SDK_NAME variable.

Images and related files are now installed into a directory that is specific to the machine, instead of a parent directory containing output files for multiple machines. The DEPLOY_DIR_IMAGE variable continues to point to the directory containing images for the current MACHINE and should be used anywhere there is a need to refer to this directory. The runqemu script now uses this variable to find images and kernel binaries and will use BitBake to determine the directory. Alternatively, you can set the DEPLOY_DIR_IMAGE variable in the external environment.

When buildhistory is enabled, its output is now written under the Build Directory rather than TMPDIR. Doing so makes it easier to delete TMPDIR and preserve the build history. Additionally, data for produced SDKs is now split by IMAGE_NAME.

The pkgdata directory produced as part of the packaging process has been collapsed into a single machine-specific directory. This directory is located under sysroots and uses a machine-specific name (i.e. tmp/sysroots/machine/pkgdata).

The value of IMAGE_FEATURES is now validated to ensure invalid feature items are not added. Some users mistakenly add package names to this variable instead of using IMAGE_INSTALL in order to have the package added to the image, which does not work. This change is intended to catch those kinds of situations. Valid IMAGE_FEATURES are drawn from PACKAGE_GROUP definitions, COMPLEMENTARY_GLOB and a new "validitems" varflag on IMAGE_FEATURES. The "validitems" varflag change allows additional features to be added if they are not provided using the previous two mechanisms.

The previously deprecated "apps-console-core" IMAGE_FEATURES item is no longer supported. Add "splash" to IMAGE_FEATURES if you wish to have the splash screen enabled, since this is all that apps-console-core was doing.

Installed package sizes: installed-package-sizes.txt for an image now records the size of the files installed by each package instead of the size of each compressed package archive file.

The dependency graphs (depends*.dot) now use the actual package names instead of replacing dashes, dots and plus signs with underscores.

The buildhistory-diff and buildhistory-collect-srcrevs utilities have improved command-line handling. Use the --help option for each utility for more information on the new syntax.

udev no longer brings in udev-extraconf automatically through RRECOMMENDS, since this was originally intended to be optional. If you need the extra rules, then add udev-extraconf to your image.

udev no longer brings in pciutils-ids or usbutils-ids through RRECOMMENDS. These are not needed by udev itself and removing them saves around 350KB.

The linux-yocto 3.2 kernel has been removed.

libtool-nativesdk has been renamed to nativesdk-libtool.

tinylogin has been removed. It has been replaced by a suid portion of Busybox. See the "BusyBox" section for more information.

external-python-tarball has been renamed to buildtools-tarball.

web-webkit has been removed. It has been functionally replaced by midori.

imake has been removed. It is no longer needed by any other recipe.

transfig-native has been removed. It is no longer needed by any other recipe.

anjuta-remote-run has been removed. Anjuta IDE integration has not been officially supported for several releases.

run-postinsts: Make this generic.

base-files: Remove the unnecessary media/xxx directories.

alsa-state: Provide an empty asound.conf by default.

classes/image: Ensure BAD_RECOMMENDATIONS supports pre-renamed package names.

classes/rootfs_rpm: Implement BAD_RECOMMENDATIONS for RPM.

systemd: Remove systemd_unitdir if systemd is not in DISTRO_FEATURES.

systemd: Remove init.d dir if systemd unit file is present and sysvinit is not a distro feature.

libpam: Deny all services for the OTHER entries.

image.bbclass: Move runtime_mapping_rename to avoid conflict with multilib. See YOCTO #4993 in Bugzilla for more information.

linux-dtb: Use kernel build system to generate the dtb files.

kern-tools: Switch from guilt to new kgit-s2q tool.

The binutils recipe no longer produces a binutils-symlinks package. update-alternatives is now used to handle the preferred binutils variant on the target instead.

The tc (traffic control) utilities have been split out of the main iproute2 package and put into the iproute2-tc package.

The gtk-engines schemas have been moved to a dedicated gtk-engines-schemas package.

The armv7a with thumb package architecture suffix has changed. The suffix for these packages with the thumb optimization enabled is "t2" as it should be. Use of this suffix was not the case in the 1.5 release. Architecture names will change within package feeds as a result.

packagegroup-toolset-native - This recipe is largely unused.

linux-yocto-3.8 - Support for the Linux yocto 3.8 kernel has been dropped. Support for the 3.10 and 3.14 kernels have been added with the linux-yocto-3.10 and linux-yocto-3.14 recipes.

ocf-linux - This recipe has been functionally replaced using cryptodev-linux.

genext2fs - genext2fs is no longer used by the build system and is unmaintained upstream.

js - This provided an ancient version of Mozilla's javascript engine that is no longer needed.

zaurusd - The recipe has been moved to the meta-handheld layer.

eglibc 2.17 - Replaced by the eglibc 2.19 recipe.

gcc 4.7.2 - Replaced by the now stable gcc 4.8.2.

external-sourcery-toolchain - this recipe is now maintained in the meta-sourcery layer.

linux-libc-headers-yocto 3.4+git - Now using version 3.10 of the linux-libc-headers by default.

meta-toolchain-gmae - This recipe is obsolete.

packagegroup-core-sdk-gmae - This recipe is obsolete.

packagegroup-core-standalone-gmae-sdk-target - This recipe is obsolete.

module_strip

pkg_metainfo

pkg_distribute

image-empty

The BeagleBoard (beagleboard) ARM reference hardware has been replaced by the BeagleBone (beaglebone) hardware.

The RouterStation Pro (routerstationpro) MIPS reference hardware has been replaced by the EdgeRouter Lite (edgerouter) hardware.

A separate build directory is now used by default: The autotools class has been changed to use a directory for building (B), which is separate from the source directory (S). This is commonly referred to as B != S, or an out-of-tree build.

If the software being built is already capable of building in a directory separate from the source, you do not need to do anything. However, if the software is not capable of being built in this manner, you will need to either patch the software so that it can build separately, or you will need to change the recipe to inherit the autotools-brokensep class instead of the autotools or autotools_stage classes.

The --foreign option is no longer passed to automake when running autoconf: This option tells automake that a particular software package does not follow the GNU standards and therefore should not be expected to distribute certain files such as ChangeLog, AUTHORS, and so forth. Because the majority of upstream software packages already tell automake to enable foreign mode themselves, the option is mostly superfluous. However, some recipes will need patches for this change. You can easily make the change by patching configure.ac so that it passes "foreign" to AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(). See this commit for an example showing how to make the patch.

Additional QA checks file-rdeps and build-deps have been added in order to verify that file dependencies are satisfied (e.g. package contains a script requiring /bin/bash) and build-time dependencies are declared, respectively. For more information, please see the "QA Error and Warning Messages" chapter.

Package QA checks are now performed during a new do_package_qa task rather than being part of the do_package task. This allows more parallel execution. This change is unlikely to be an issue except for highly customized recipes that disable packaging tasks themselves by marking them as noexec. For those packages, you will need to disable the do_package_qa task as well.

Files being overwritten during the do_populate_sysroot task now trigger an error instead of a warning. Recipes should not be overwriting files written to the sysroot by other recipes. If you have these types of recipes, you need to alter them so that they do not overwrite these files.

You might now receive this error after changes in configuration or metadata resulting in orphaned files being left in the sysroot. If you do receive this error, the way to resolve the issue is to delete your TMPDIR or to move it out of the way and then re-start the build. Anything that has been fully built up to that point and does not need rebuilding will be restored from the shared state cache and the rest of the build will be able to proceed as normal.

x-load: This recipe has been superseded by U-boot SPL for all Cortex-based TI SoCs. For legacy boards, the meta-ti layer, which contains a maintained recipe, should be used instead.

ubootchart: This recipe is obsolete. A bootchart2 recipe has been added to functionally replace it.

linux-yocto 3.4: Support for the linux-yocto 3.4 kernel has been dropped. Support for the 3.10 and 3.14 kernels remains, while support for version 3.17 has been added.

eglibc has been removed in favor of glibc. See the "eglibc 2.19 Replaced with glibc 2.20" section for more information.

The build history feature now writes build-id.txt instead of build-id. Additionally, build-id.txt now contains the full build header as printed by BitBake upon starting the build. You should manually remove old "build-id" files from your existing build history repositories to avoid confusion. For information on the build history feature, see the "Maintaining Build Output Quality" section in the Yocto Project Development Tasks Manual.

owl-video: Functionality replaced by gst-player.

gaku: Functionality replaced by gst-player.

gnome-desktop: This recipe is now available in meta-gnome and is no longer needed.

gsettings-desktop-schemas: This recipe is now available in meta-gnome and is no longer needed.

python-argparse: The argparse module is already provided in the default Python distribution in a package named python-argparse. Consequently, the separate python-argparse recipe is no longer needed.

telepathy-python, libtelepathy, telepathy-glib, telepathy-idle, telepathy-mission-control: All these recipes have moved to meta-oe and are consequently no longer needed by any recipes in OpenEmbedded-Core.

linux-yocto_3.10 and linux-yocto_3.17: Support for the linux-yocto 3.10 and 3.17 kernels has been dropped. Support for the 3.14 kernel remains, while support for 3.19 kernel has been added.

poky-feed-config-opkg: This recipe has become obsolete and is no longer needed. Use distro-feed-config from meta-oe instead.

libav 0.8.x: libav 9.x is now used.

sed-native: No longer needed. A working version of sed is expected to be provided by the host distribution.

Usage of PRINC previously triggered a warning. It now triggers an error. You should remove any remaining usage of PRINC in any recipe or append file.

An additional QA check has been added to detect usage of ${D} in FILES values where D values should not be used at all. The same check ensures that $D is used in pkg_preinst/pkg_postinst/pkg_prerm/pkg_postrm functions instead of ${D}.

S now needs to be set to a valid value within a recipe. If S is not set in the recipe, the directory is not automatically created. If S does not point to a directory that exists at the time the do_unpack task finishes, a warning will be shown.

LICENSE is now validated for correct formatting of multiple licenses. If the format is invalid (e.g. multiple licenses are specified with no operators to specify how the multiple licenses interact), then a warning will be shown.

The send-error-report script now expects a "-s" option to be specified before the server address. This assumes a server address is being specified.

The oe-pkgdata-util script now expects a "-p" option to be specified before the pkgdata directory, which is now optional. If the pkgdata directory is not specified, the script will run BitBake to query PKGDATA_DIR from the build environment.

bluez4: The recipe is obsolete and has been moved due to bluez5 becoming fully integrated. The bluez4 recipe now resides in meta-oe.

gamin: The recipe is obsolete and has been removed.

gnome-icon-theme: The recipe's functionally has been replaced by adwaita-icon-theme.

Gstreamer 0.10 Recipes: Recipes for Gstreamer 0.10 have been removed in favor of the recipes for Gstreamer 1.x.

insserv: The recipe is obsolete and has been removed.

libunique: The recipe is no longer used and has been moved to meta-oe.

midori: The recipe's functionally has been replaced by epiphany.

python-gst: The recipe is obsolete and has been removed since it only contains bindings for Gstreamer 0.10.

qt-mobility: The recipe is obsolete and has been removed since it requires Gstreamer 0.10, which has been replaced.

subversion: All 1.6.x versions of this recipe have been removed.

webkit-gtk: The older 1.8.3 version of this recipe has been removed in favor of webkitgtk.

All potential overrides are now visible in the variable history as seen when you run the following:

     $ bitbake -e
                    

d.delVar('VARNAME') and d.setVar('VARNAME', None) result in the variable and all of its overrides being cleared out. Before the change, only the non-overridden values were cleared.

If you now see messages on the console that you did not previously see as a result of this change, you might need to clean up the calls to bbwarn, bberror, and so forth. Or, you might want to simply remove the calls.

The bbfatal message function now suppresses the full error log in the UI, which means any calls to bbfatal where you still wish to see the full error log should be replaced by die or bbfatal_log.

acl

apmd

aspell

attr

augeas

bzip2

cogl

curl

elfutils

gcc-target

libgcc

libtool

libxmu

opkg

pciutils

rpm

sysfsutils

tiff

xz

Added a "host-user-contaminated" check for ownership issues for packaged files outside of /home. The check looks for files that are incorrectly owned by the user that ran BitBake instead of owned by a valid user in the target system.

Added an "invalid-chars" check for invalid (non-UTF8) characters in recipe metadata variable values (i.e. DESCRIPTION, SUMMARY, LICENSE, and SECTION). Some package managers do not support these characters.

Added an "invalid-packageconfig" check for any options specified in PACKAGECONFIG that do not match any PACKAGECONFIG option defined for the recipe.

gtk-update-icon-cache has been renamed to gtk-icon-utils.

The tools-profile IMAGE_FEATURES item as well as its corresponding packagegroup and packagegroup-core-tools-profile no longer bring in oprofile. Bringing in oprofile was originally added to aid compilation on resource-constrained targets. However, this aid has not been widely used and is not likely to be used going forward due to the more powerful target platforms and the existence of better cross-compilation tools.

The IMAGE_FSTYPES variable's default value now specifies ext4 instead of ext3.

All support for the PRINC variable has been removed.

The packagegroup-core-full-cmdline packagegroup no longer brings in lighttpd due to the fact that bringing in lighttpd is not really in line with the packagegroup's purpose, which is to add full versions of command-line tools that by default are provided by busybox.

gcc version 4.8: Versions 4.9 and 5.3 remain.

qt4: All support for Qt 4.x has been moved out to a separate meta-qt4 layer because Qt 4 is no longer supported upstream.

x11vnc: Moved to the meta-oe layer.

linux-yocto-3.14: No longer supported.

linux-yocto-3.19: No longer supported.

libjpeg: Replaced by the libjpeg-turbo recipe.

pth: Became obsolete.

liboil: Recipe is no longer needed and has been moved to the meta-multimedia layer.

gtk-theme-torturer: Recipe is no longer needed and has been moved to the meta-gnome layer.

gnome-mime-data: Recipe is no longer needed and has been moved to the meta-gnome layer.

udev: Replaced by the eudev recipe for compatibility when using sysvinit with newer kernels.

python-pygtk: Recipe became obsolete.

adt-installer: Recipe became obsolete. See the "ADT Removed" section for more information.

autotools_stage: Removed because the autotools class now provides its functionality. Recipes that inherited from autotools_stage should now inherit from autotools instead.

boot-directdisk: Merged into the image-vm class. The boot-directdisk class was rarely directly used. Consequently, this change should not cause any issues.

bootimg: Merged into the image-live class. The bootimg class was rarely directly used. Consequently, this change should not cause any issues.

packageinfo: Removed due to its limited use by the Hob UI, which has itself been removed.

Hob GTK+-based UI: Removed because it is unmaintained and based on the outdated GTK+ 2 library. The Toaster web-based UI is much more capable and is actively maintained. See the "Using the Toaster Web Interface" section in the Toaster User Manual for more information on this interface.

"puccho" BitBake UI: Removed because is unmaintained and no longer useful.

The meta-yocto layer has been renamed to meta-poky to better match its purpose, which is to provide the Poky reference distribution. The meta-yocto-bsp layer retains its original name since it provides reference machines for the Yocto Project and it is otherwise unrelated to Poky. References to meta-yocto in your conf/bblayers.conf should automatically be updated, so you should not need to change anything unless you are relying on this naming elsewhere.

The uninative class is now enabled by default in Poky. This class attempts to isolate the build system from the host distribution's C library and makes re-use of native shared state artifacts across different host distributions practical. With this class enabled, a tarball containing a pre-built C library is downloaded at the start of the build.

The uninative class is enabled through the meta/conf/distro/include/yocto-uninative.inc file, which for those not using the Poky distribution, can include to easily enable the same functionality.

Alternatively, if you wish to build your own uninative tarball, you can do so by building the uninative-tarball recipe, making it available to your build machines (e.g. over HTTP/HTTPS) and setting a similar configuration as the one set by yocto-uninative.inc.

Static library generation, for most cases, is now disabled by default in the Poky distribution. Disabling this generation saves some build time as well as the size used for build output artifacts.

Disabling this library generation is accomplished through a meta/conf/distro/include/no-static-libs.inc, which for those not using the Poky distribution can easily include to enable the same functionality.

Any recipe that needs to opt-out of having the "--disable-static" option specified on the configure command line either because it is not a supported option for the configure script or because static libraries are needed should set the following variable:

     DISABLE_STATIC = ""
                    

The separate poky-tiny distribution now uses the musl C library instead of a heavily pared down glibc. Using musl results in a smaller distribution and facilitates much greater maintainability because musl is designed to have a small footprint.

If you have used poky-tiny and have customized the glibc configuration you will need to redo those customizations with musl when upgrading to the new release.

The runuser and mountpoint binaries, which were previously in the main util-linux package, have been split out into the util-linux-runuser and util-linux-mountpoint packages, respectively.

The python-elementtree package has been merged into the python-xml package.

The "no-thumb-interwork" tuning feature has been dropped from the ARM tune include files. Because interworking is required for ARM EABI, attempting to disable it through a tuning feature no longer makes sense.

The tune-cortexm*.inc and tune-cortexr4.inc files have been removed because they are poorly tested. Until the OpenEmbedded build system officially gains support for CPUs without an MMU, these tuning files would probably be better maintained in a separate layer if needed.

The minimum Git version has been increased to 1.8.3.1. If your host distribution does not provide a sufficiently recent version, you can install the buildtools, which will provide it. See the "Required Git, tar, and Python Versions" section for more information on the buildtools tarball.

The buggy and incomplete support for the RPM version 4 package manager has been removed. The well-tested and maintained support for RPM version 5 remains.

Previously, the following list of packages were removed if package-management was not in IMAGE_FEATURES, regardless of any dependencies:

     update-rc.d
     base-passwd
     shadow
     update-alternatives
     run-postinsts
                    

With the Yocto Project 2.1 release, these packages are only removed if "read-only-rootfs" is in IMAGE_FEATURES, since they might still be needed for a read-write image even in the absence of a package manager (e.g. if users need to be added, modified, or removed at runtime).

The devtool modify command now defaults to extracting the source since that is most commonly expected. The "-x" or "--extract" options are now no-ops. If you wish to provide your own existing source tree, you will now need to specify either the "-n" or "--no-extract" options when running devtool modify.

If the formfactor for a machine is either not supplied or does not specify whether a keyboard is attached, then the default is to assume a keyboard is attached rather than assume no keyboard. This change primarily affects the Sato UI.

The .debug directory packaging is now automatic. If your recipe builds software that installs binaries into directories other than the standard ones, you no longer need to take care of setting FILES_${PN}-dbg to pick up the resulting .debug directories as these directories are automatically found and added.

Inaccurate disk and CPU percentage data has been dropped from buildstats output. This data has been replaced with getrusage() data and corrected IO statistics. You will probably need to update any custom code that reads the buildstats data.

The meta/conf/distro/include/package_regex.inc is now deprecated. The contents of this file have been moved to individual recipes.

The v86d/uvesafb has been removed from the genericx86 and genericx86-64 reference machines, which are provided by the meta-yocto-bsp layer. Most modern x86 boards do not rely on this file and it only adds kernel error messages during startup. If you do still need to support uvesafb, you can simply add v86d to your image.

Build sysroot paths are now removed from debug symbol files. Removing these paths means that remote GDB using an unstripped build system sysroot will no longer work (although this was never documented to work). The supported method to accomplish something similar is to set IMAGE_GEN_DEBUGFS to "1", which will generate a companion debug image containing unstripped binaries and associated debug sources alongside the image.

The "goggle" UI and standalone image-writer tool have been removed as they both require GTK+ 2.0 and were not being maintained.

The Perforce fetcher now supports SRCREV for specifying the source revision to use, be it ${AUTOREV}, changelist number, p4date, or label, in preference to separate SRC_URI parameters to specify these. This change is more in-line with how the other fetchers work for source control systems. Recipes that fetch from Perforce will need to be updated to use SRCREV in place of specifying the source revision within SRC_URI.

Some of BitBake's internal code structures for accessing the recipe cache needed to be changed to support the new multi-configuration functionality. These changes will affect external tools that use BitBake's tinfoil module. For information on these changes, see the changes made to the scripts supplied with OpenEmbedded-Core: 1 and 2.

The task management code has been rewritten to avoid using ID indirection in order to improve performance. This change is unlikely to cause any problems for most users. However, the setscene verification function as pointed to by BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION needed to change signature. Consequently, a new variable named BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION2 has been added allowing multiple versions of BitBake to work with suitably written metadata, which includes OpenEmbedded-Core and Poky. Anyone with custom BitBake task scheduler code might also need to update the code to handle the new structure.

augeas: No longer needed and has been moved to meta-oe.

directfb: Unmaintained and has been moved to meta-oe.

gcc: Removed 4.9 version. Versions 5.4 and 6.2 are still present.

gnome-doc-utils: No longer needed.

gtk-doc-stub: Replaced by gtk-doc.

gtk-engines: No longer needed and has been moved to meta-gnome.

gtk-sato-engine: Became obsolete.

libglade: No longer needed and has been moved to meta-oe.

libmad: Unmaintained and functionally replaced by libmpg123. libmad has been moved to meta-oe.

libowl: Became obsolete.

libxsettings-client: No longer needed.

oh-puzzles: Functionally replaced by puzzles.

oprofileui: Became obsolete. OProfile has been largely supplanted by perf.

packagegroup-core-directfb.bb: Removed.

core-image-directfb.bb: Removed.

pointercal: No longer needed and has been moved to meta-oe.

python-imaging: No longer needed and moved to meta-python

python-pyrex: No longer needed and moved to meta-python.

sato-icon-theme: Became obsolete.

swabber-native: Swabber has been removed. See the entry on Swabber.

tslib: No longer needed and has been moved to meta-oe.

uclibc: Removed in favor of musl.

xtscal: No longer needed and moved to meta-oe

distutils-native-base: No longer needed.

distutils3-native-base: No longer needed.

sdl: Only set DEPENDS and SECTION, which are better set within the recipe instead.

sip: Mostly unused.

swabber: See the entry on Swabber.

grub: Split grub-editenv into its own package.

systemd: Split container and vm related units into a new package, systemd-container.

util-linux: Moved prlimit to a separate util-linux-prlimit package.

package_regex.inc: Removed because the definitions package_regex.inc previously contained have been moved to their respective recipes.

Both devtool add and recipetool create now use a fixed SRCREV by default when fetching from a Git repository. You can override this in either case to use ${AUTOREV} instead by using the -a or ‐‐autorev command-line option

distcc: GTK+ UI is now disabled by default.

packagegroup-core-tools-testapps: Removed Piglit.

image.bbclass: Renamed COMPRESS(ION) to CONVERSION. This change means that COMPRESSIONTYPES, COMPRESS_DEPENDS and COMPRESS_CMD are deprecated in favor of CONVERSIONTYPES, CONVERSION_DEPENDS and CONVERSION_CMD. The COMPRESS* variable names will still work in the 2.2 release but metadata that does not need to be backwards-compatible should be changed to use the new names as the COMPRESS* ones will be removed in a future release.

gtk-doc: A full version of gtk-doc is now made available. However, some old software might not be capable of using the current version of gtk-doc to build documentation. You need to change recipes that build such software so that they explicitly disable building documentation with gtk-doc.

Declare Build-Time Dependencies: Because of this new feature, you must explicitly declare all build-time dependencies for your recipe. If you do not declare these dependencies, they are not populated into the sysroot for the recipe.

Specify Pre-Installation and Post-Installation Native Tool Dependencies: You must specifically specify any special native tool dependencies of pkg_preinst and pkg_postinst scripts by using the PACKAGE_WRITE_DEPS variable. Specifying these dependencies ensures that these tools are available if these scripts need to be run on the build host during the do_rootfs task.

As an example, see the dbus recipe. You will see that this recipe has a pkg_postinst that calls systemctl if "systemd" is in DISTRO_FEATURES. In the example, systemd-systemctl-native is added to PACKAGE_WRITE_DEPS, which is also conditional on "systemd" being in DISTRO_FEATURES.

Examine Recipes that Use SSTATEPOSTINSTFUNCS: You need to examine any recipe that uses SSTATEPOSTINSTFUNCS and determine steps to take.

Functions added to SSTATEPOSTINSTFUNCS are still called as they were in previous Yocto Project releases. However, since a separate sysroot is now being populated for every recipe and if existing functions being called through SSTATEPOSTINSTFUNCS are doing relocation, then you will need to change these to use a post-installation script that is installed by a function added to SYSROOT_PREPROCESS_FUNCS.

For an example, see the pixbufcache class in meta/classes/ in the Yocto Project Source Repositories.

Specify the Sysroot when Using Certain External Scripts: Because the shared sysroot is now gone, the scripts oe-find-native-sysroot and oe-run-native have been changed such that you need to specify which recipe's STAGING_DIR_NATIVE is used.

oe-find-native-sysroot: The usage for the oe-find-native-sysroot script has changed to the following:

     $ . oe-find-native-sysroot recipe
                    

You must now supply a recipe for recipe as part of the command. Prior to the Yocto Project 2.5.3 release, it was not necessary to provide the script with the command.

oe-run-native: The usage for the oe-run-native script has changed to the following:

     $ oe-run-native native_recipe tool
                    

You must supply the name of the native recipe and the tool you want to run as part of the command. Prior to the Yocto Project 2.5.3 release, it was not necessary to provide the native recipe with the command.

cleanup-workdir: The cleanup-workdir script has been removed because the script was found to be deleting files it should not have, which lead to broken build trees. Rather than trying to delete portions of TMPDIR and getting it wrong, it is recommended that you delete TMPDIR and have it restored from shared state (sstate) on subsequent builds.

wipe-sysroot: The wipe-sysroot script has been removed as it is no longer needed with recipe-specific sysroots.

BitBake's Graphical Dependency Explorer UI Replaced: BitBake's graphical dependency explorer UI depexp was replaced by taskexp ("Task Explorer"), which provides a graphical way of exploring the task-depends.dot file. The data presented by Task Explorer is much more accurate than the data that was presented by depexp. Being able to visualize the data is an often requested feature as standard *.dot file viewers cannot usual cope with the size of the task-depends.dot file.

BitBake "-g" Output Changes: The package-depends.dot and pn-depends.dot files as previously generated using the bitbake -g command have been removed. A recipe-depends.dot file is now generated as a collapsed version of task-depends.dot instead.

The reason for this change is because package-depends.dot and pn-depends.dot largely date back to a time before task-based execution and do not take into account task-level dependencies between recipes, which could be misleading.

Mirror Variable Splitting Changes: Mirror variables including MIRRORS, PREMIRRORS, and SSTATE_MIRRORS can now separate values entirely with spaces. Consequently, you no longer need "\\n". BitBake looks for pairs of values, which simplifies usage. There should be no change required to existing mirror variable values themselves.

The Subversion (SVN) Fetcher Uses an "ssh" Parameter and Not an "rsh" Parameter: The SVN fetcher now takes an "ssh" parameter instead of an "rsh" parameter. This new optional parameter is used when the "protocol" parameter is set to "svn+ssh". You can only use the new parameter to specify the ssh program used by SVN. The SVN fetcher passes the new parameter through the SVN_SSH environment variable during the do_fetch task.

See the "Subversion (SVN) Fetcher (svn://)" section in the BitBake User Manual for additional information.

BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION and BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION2 Removed: Because the mechanism they were part of is no longer necessary with recipe-specific sysroots, the BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION and BB_SETSCENE_VERIFY_FUNCTION2 variables have been removed.

Smart package manager is replaced by DNF package manager. Smart has become unmaintained upstream, is not ported to Python 3.x. Consequently, Smart needed to be replaced. DNF is the only feasible candidate.

The change in functionality is that the on-target runtime package management from remote package feeds is now done with a different tool that has a different set of command-line options. If you have scripts that call the tool directly, or use its API, they need to be fixed.

For more information, see the DNF Documentation.

Rpm 5.x is replaced with Rpm 4.x. This is done for two major reasons:

Berkeley DB 6.x is removed and Berkeley DB 5.x becomes the default:

createrepo is replaced with createrepo_c.

createrepo_c is the current incarnation of the tool that generates remote repository metadata. It is written in C as compared to createrepo, which is written in Python. createrepo_c is faster and is maintained.

Architecture-independent RPM packages are "noarch" instead of "all".

This change was made because too many places in DNF/RPM4 stack already make that assumption. Only the filenames and the architecture tag has changed. Nothing else has changed in OE-core system, particularly in the allarch.bbclass class.

Signing of remote package feeds using PACKAGE_FEED_SIGN is not currently supported. This issue will be fully addressed in a future Yocto Project release. See defect 11209 for more information on a solution to package feed signing with RPM in the Yocto Project 2.3 release.

OPKG now uses the libsolv backend for resolving package dependencies by default. This is vastly superior to OPKG's internal ad-hoc solver that was previously used. This change does have a small impact on disk (around 500 KB) and memory footprint.

linux-yocto 4.8: Version 4.8 has been removed. Versions 4.1 (LTSI), 4.4 (LTS), 4.9 (LTS/LTSI) and 4.10 are now present.

python-smartpm: Functionally replaced by dnf.

createrepo: Replaced by the createrepo-c recipe.

rpmresolve: No longer needed with the move to RPM 4 as RPM itself is used instead.

gstreamer: Removed the GStreamer Git version recipes as they have been stale. 1.10.x recipes are still present.

alsa-conf-base: Merged into alsa-conf since libasound depended on both. Essentially, no way existed to install only one of these.

tremor: Moved to meta-multimedia. Fixed-integer Vorbis decoding is not needed by current hardware. Thus, GStreamer's ivorbis plugin has been disabled by default eliminating the need for the tremor recipe in OE-Core.

gummiboot: Replaced by systemd-boot.

Default Output Directory Changed: Wic's default output directory is now the current directory by default instead of the unusual /var/tmp/wic.

The "-o" and "--outdir" options remain unchanged and are used to specify your preferred output directory if you do not want to use the default directory.

fsimage Plug-in Removed: The Wic fsimage plug-in has been removed as it duplicates functionality of the rawcopy plug-in.

unsafe-references-in-binaries: The unsafe-references-in-binaries QA check, which was disabled by default, has now been removed. This check was intended to detect binaries in /bin that link to libraries in /usr/lib and have the case where the user has /usr on a separate filesystem to /.

The removed QA check was buggy. Additionally, /usr residing on a separate partition from / is now a rare configuration. Consequently, unsafe-references-in-binaries was removed.

file-rdeps: The file-rdeps QA check is now an error by default instead of a warning. Because it is an error instead of a warning, you need to address missing runtime dependencies.

For additional information, see the insane class and the "Errors and Warnings" section.

In this release, a number of recipes have been changed to ignore the largefile DISTRO_FEATURES item, enabling large file support unconditionally. This feature has always been enabled by default. Disabling the feature has not been widely tested.

If the DISTRO_VERSION value contains the value of the DATE variable, which is the default between Poky releases, the DATE value is explicitly excluded from /etc/issue and /etc/issue.net, which is displayed at the login prompt, in order to avoid conflicts with Multilib enabled. Regardless, the DATE value is inaccurate if the base-files recipe is restored from shared state (sstate) rather than rebuilt.

If you need the build date recorded in /etc/issue* or anywhere else in your image, a better method is to define a post-processing function to do it and have the function called from ROOTFS_POSTPROCESS_COMMAND. Doing so ensures the value is always up-to-date with the created image.

Dropbear's init script now disables DSA host keys by default. This change is in line with the systemd service file, which supports RSA keys only, and with recent versions of OpenSSH, which deprecates DSA host keys.

The buildhistory class now correctly uses tabs as separators between all columns in installed-package-sizes.txt in order to aid import into other tools.

The USE_LDCONFIG variable has been replaced with the "ldconfig" DISTRO_FEATURES feature. Distributions that previously set:

     USE_LDCONFIG = "0"
                    

should now instead use the following:

     DISTRO_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED_append = " ldconfig"
                    

The default value of COPYLEFT_LICENSE_INCLUDE now includes all versions of AGPL licenses in addition to GPL and LGPL.

Kernel module packages are now suffixed with the kernel version in order to allow module packages from multiple kernel versions to co-exist on a target system. If you wish to return to the previous naming scheme that does not include the version suffix, use the following:

     KERNEL_MODULE_PACKAGE_SUFFIX to ""
                    

Removal of libtool *.la files is now enabled by default. The *.la files are not actually needed on Linux and relocating them is an unnecessary burden.

If you need to preserve these .la files (e.g. in a custom distribution), you must change INHERIT_DISTRO such that "remove-libtool" is not included in the value.

Extensible SDKs built for GCC 5+ now refuse to install on a distribution where the host GCC version is 4.8 or 4.9. This change resulted from the fact that the installation is known to fail due to the way the uninative shared state (sstate) package is built. See the uninative class for additional information.

All native and nativesdk recipes now use a separate DISTRO_FEATURES value instead of sharing the value used by recipes for the target, in order to avoid unnecessary rebuilds.

The DISTRO_FEATURES for native recipes is DISTRO_FEATURES_NATIVE added to an intersection of DISTRO_FEATURES and DISTRO_FEATURES_FILTER_NATIVE.

For nativesdk recipes, the corresponding variables are DISTRO_FEATURES_NATIVESDK and DISTRO_FEATURES_FILTER_NATIVESDK.

The FILESDIR variable, which was previously deprecated and rarely used, has now been removed. You should change any recipes that set FILESDIR to set FILESPATH instead.

The MULTIMACH_HOST_SYS variable has been removed as it is no longer needed with recipe-specific sysroots.

python3 Changes:

binutils: The libbfd library is now packaged in a separate "libbfd" package. This packaging saves space when certain tools (e.g. perf) are installed. In such cases, the tools only need libbfd rather than all the packages in binutils.

util-linux Changes:

initscripts: The sushell program is now packaged in a separate "initscripts-sushell" package. This packaging change allows systems to pull sushell in when selinux is enabled. The change also eliminates needing to pull in the entire initscripts package. The main initscripts package has a runtime dependency (i.e. RDEPENDS) on the sushell package when "selinux" is in DISTRO_FEATURES.

glib-2.0: The glib-2.0 package now has a recommended runtime dependency (i.e. RRECOMMENDS) on the shared-mime-info package, since large portions of GIO are not useful without the MIME database. You can remove the dependency by using the BAD_RECOMMENDATIONS variable if shared-mime-info is too large and is not required.

Go Standard Runtime: The Go standard runtime has been split out from the main go recipe into a separate go-runtime recipe.

acpitests: This recipe is not maintained.

autogen-native: No longer required by Grub, oe-core, or meta-oe.

bdwgc: Nothing in OpenEmbedded-Core requires this recipe. It has moved to meta-oe.

byacc: This recipe was only needed by rpm 5.x and has moved to meta-oe.

gcc (5.4): The 5.4 series dropped the recipe in favor of 6.3 / 7.2.

gnome-common: Deprecated upstream and no longer needed.

go-bootstrap-native: Go 1.9 does its own bootstrapping so this recipe has been removed.

guile: This recipe was only needed by autogen-native and remake. The recipe is no longer needed by either of these programs.

libclass-isa-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

libdumpvalue-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

libenv-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

libfile-checktree-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

libi18n-collate-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

libiconv: This recipe was only needed for uclibc, which was removed in the previous release. glibc and musl have their own implementations. meta-mingw still needs libiconv, so it has been moved to meta-mingw.

libpng12: This recipe was previously needed for LSB. The current libpng is 1.6.x.

libpod-plainer-perl: This recipe was previously needed for LSB 4, no longer needed.

linux-yocto (4.1): This recipe was removed in favor of 4.4, 4.9, 4.10 and 4.12.

mailx: This recipe was previously only needed for LSB compatibility, and upstream is defunct.

mesa (git version only): The git version recipe was stale with respect to the release version.

ofono (git version only): The git version recipe was stale with respect to the release version.

portmap: This recipe is obsolete and is superseded by rpcbind.

python3-pygpgme: This recipe is old and unmaintained. It was previously required by dnf, which has switched to official gpgme Python bindings.

python-async: This recipe has been removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-gitdb: This recipe has been removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-git: This recipe was removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-mako: This recipe was removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-pexpect: This recipe was removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-ptyprocess: This recipe was removed in favor of Python the 3 version.

python-pycurl: Nothing is using this recipe in OpenEmbedded-Core (i.e. meta-oe).

python-six: This recipe was removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

python-smmap: This recipe was removed in favor of the Python 3 version.

remake: Using remake as the provider of virtual/make is broken. Consequently, this recipe is not needed in OpenEmbedded-Core.

The "unsafe-references-in-scripts" QA check has been removed.

If you refer to ${COREBASE}/LICENSE within LIC_FILES_CHKSUM you receive a warning because this file is a description of the license for OE-Core. Use ${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT if your recipe is MIT-licensed and you cannot use the preferred method of referring to a file within the source tree.

The main Poky README file has been moved to the meta-poky layer and has been renamed README.poky. A symlink has been created so that references to the old location work.

The README.hardware file has been moved to meta-yocto-bsp. A symlink has been created so that references to the old location work.

A README.qemu file has been created with coverage of the qemu* machines.

The ROOTFS_PKGMANAGE_BOOTSTRAP variable and any references to it have been removed. You should remove this variable from any custom recipes.

The meta-yocto directory has been removed.

The maintainers.inc file, which tracks maintainers by listing a primary person responsible for each recipe in OE-Core, has been moved from meta-poky to OE-Core (i.e. from meta-poky/conf/distro/include to meta/conf/distro/include).

The buildhistory class now makes a single commit per build rather than one commit per subdirectory in the repository. This behavior assumes the commits are enabled with BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1", which is typical. Previously, the buildhistory class made one commit per subdirectory in the repository in order to make it easier to see the changes for a particular subdirectory. To view a particular change, specify that subdirectory as the last parameter on the git show or git diff commands.

The x86-base.inc file, which is included by all x86-based machine configurations, now sets IMAGE_FSTYPES using ?= to "live" rather than appending with +=. This change makes the default easier to override.

BitBake fires multiple "BuildStarted" events when multiconfig is enabled (one per configuration). For more information, see the "Events" section in the BitBake User Manual.

By default, the security_flags.inc file sets a GCCPIE variable with an option to enable Position Independent Executables (PIE) within gcc. Enabling PIE in the GNU C Compiler (GCC), makes Return Oriented Programming (ROP) attacks much more difficult to execute.

OE-Core now provides a bitbake-layers plugin that implements a "create-layer" subcommand. The implementation of this subcommand has resulted in the yocto-layer script being deprecated and will likely be removed in the next Yocto Project release.

The vmdk, vdi, and qcow2 image file types are now used in conjunction with the "wic" image type through CONVERSION_CMD. Consequently, the equivalent image types are now wic.vmdk, wic.vdi, and wic.qcow2, respectively.

do_image_<type>[depends] has replaced IMAGE_DEPENDS_<type>. If you have your own classes that implement custom image types, then you need to update them.

OpenSSL 1.1 has been introduced. However, the default is still 1.0.x through the PREFERRED_VERSION variable. This preference is set is due to the remaining compatibility issues with other software. The PROVIDES variable in the openssl 1.0 recipe now includes "openssl10" as a marker that can be used in DEPENDS within recipes that build software that still depend on OpenSSL 1.0.

To ensure consistent behavior, BitBake's "-r" and "-R" options (i.e. prefile and postfile), which are used to read or post-read additional configuration files from the command line, now only affect the current BitBake command. Before these BitBake changes, these options would "stick" for future executions.

bind-libs: The libraries packaged by the bind recipe are in a separate bind-libs package.

libfm-gtk: The libfm GTK+ bindings are split into a separate libfm-gtk package.

flex-libfl: The flex recipe splits out libfl into a separate flex-libfl package to avoid too many dependencies being pulled in where only the library is needed.

grub-efi: The grub-efi configuration is split into a separate grub-bootconf recipe. However, the dependency relationship from grub-efi is through a virtual/grub-bootconf provider making it possible to have your own recipe provide the dependency. Alternatively, you can use a BitBake append file to bring the configuration back into the grub-efi recipe.

armv7a Legacy Package Feed Support: Legacy support is removed for transitioning from armv7a to armv7a-vfp-neon in package feeds, which was previously enabled by setting PKGARCHCOMPAT_ARMV7A. This transition occurred in 2011 and active package feeds should by now be updated to the new naming.

gcc: The version 6.4 recipes are replaced by 7.x.

gst-player: Renamed to gst-examples as per upstream.

hostap-utils: This software package is obsolete.

latencytop: This recipe is no longer maintained upstream. The last release was in 2009.

libpfm4: The only file that requires this recipe is oprofile, which has been removed.

linux-yocto: The version 4.4, 4.9, and 4.10 recipes have been removed. Versions 4.12, 4.14, and 4.15 remain.

man: This recipe has been replaced by modern man-db

mkelfimage: This tool has been removed in the upstream coreboot project, and is no longer needed with the removal of the ELF image type.

nativesdk-postinst-intercept: This recipe is not maintained.

neon: This software package is no longer maintained upstream and is no longer needed by anything in OpenEmbedded-Core.

oprofile: The functionality of this recipe is replaced by perf and keeping compatibility on an ongoing basis with musl is difficult.

pax: This software package is obsolete.

stat: This software package is not maintained upstream. coreutils provides a modern stat binary.

zisofs-tools-native: This recipe is no longer needed because the compressed ISO image feature has been removed.

yocto-bsp, yocto-kernel, and yocto-layer: The yocto-bsp, yocto-kernel, and yocto-layer scripts previously shipped with poky but not in OpenEmbedded-Core have been removed. These scripts are not maintained and are outdated. In many cases, they are also limited in scope. The bitbake-layers create-layer command is a direct replacement for yocto-layer. See the documentation to create a BSP or kernel recipe in the "BSP Kernel Recipe Example" section.

devtool finish: devtool finish now exits with an error if there are uncommitted changes or a rebase/am in progress in the recipe's source repository. If this error occurs, there might be uncommitted changes that will not be included in updates to the patches applied by the recipe. A -f/--force option is provided for situations that the uncommitted changes are inconsequential and you want to proceed regardless.

scripts/oe-setup-rpmrepo script: The functionality of scripts/oe-setup-rpmrepo is replaced by bitbake package-index.

scripts/test-dependencies.sh script: The script is largely made obsolete by the recipe-specific sysroots functionality introduced in the previous release.

The --runall option has changed. There are two different behaviors people might want:

The --runall option now performs "Behavior B". Previously --runall behaved like "Behavior A". A --runonly option has been added to retain the ability to perform "Behavior A".

Several explicit "run this task for all recipes in the dependency tree" tasks have been removed (e.g. fetchall, checkuriall, and the *all tasks provided by the distrodata and archiver classes). There is a BitBake option to complete this for any arbitrary task. For example:

     bitbake <target> -c fetchall
                    

should now be replaced with:

     bitbake <target> --runall=fetch
                    

The kernel class supports building packages for multiple kernels. If your kernel recipe or .bbappend file mentions packaging at all, you should replace references to the kernel in package names with ${KERNEL_PACKAGE_NAME}. For example, if you disable automatic installation of the kernel image using RDEPENDS_kernel-base = "" you can avoid warnings using RDEPENDS_${KERNEL_PACKAGE_NAME}-base = "" instead.

The buildhistory class commits changes to the repository by default so you no longer need to set BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1". If you want to disable commits you need to set BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "0" in your configuration.

The beaglebone reference machine has been renamed to beaglebone-yocto. The beaglebone-yocto BSP is a reference implementation using only mainline components available in OpenEmbedded-Core and meta-yocto-bsp, whereas Texas Instruments maintains a full-featured BSP in the meta-ti layer. This rename avoids the previous name clash that existed between the two BSPs.

The update-alternatives class no longer works with SysV init scripts because this usage has been problematic. Also, the sysklogd recipe no longer uses update-alternatives because it is incompatible with other implementations.

By default, the cmake class uses ninja instead of make for building. This improves build performance. If a recipe is broken with ninja, then the recipe can set OECMAKE_GENERATOR = "Unix Makefiles" to change back to make.

The previously deprecated base_* functions have been removed in favor of their replacements in meta/lib/oe and bitbake/lib/bb. These are typically used from recipes and classes. Any references to the old functions must be updated. The following table shows the removed functions and their replacements:

     Removed                                 Replacement
     ============================            ============================
     base_path_join()                        oe.path.join()
     base_path_relative()                    oe.path.relative()
     base_path_out()                         oe.path.format_display()
     base_read_file()                        oe.utils.read_file()
     base_ifelse()                           oe.utils.ifelse()
     base_conditional()                      oe.utils.conditional()
     base_less_or_equal()                    oe.utils.less_or_equal()
     base_version_less_or_equal()            oe.utils.version_less_or_equal()
     base_contains()                         bb.utils.contains()
     base_both_contain()                     oe.utils.both_contain()
     base_prune_suffix()                     oe.utils.prune_suffix()
     oe_filter()                             oe.utils.str_filter()
     oe_filter_out()                         oe.utils.str_filter_out() (or use the _remove operator).
                    

Using exit 1 to explicitly defer a postinstall script until first boot is now deprecated since it is not an obvious mechanism and can mask actual errors. If you want to explicitly defer a postinstall to first boot on the target rather than at rootfs creation time, use pkg_postinst_ontarget() or call postinst-intercepts defer_to_first_boot from pkg_postinst(). Any failure of a pkg_postinst() script (including exit 1) will trigger a warning during do_rootfs.

The elf image type has been removed. This image type was removed because the mkelfimage tool that was required to create it is no longer provided by coreboot upstream and required updating every time binutils updated.

Support for .iso image compression (previously enabled through COMPRESSISO = "1") has been removed. The userspace tools (zisofs-tools) are unmaintained and squashfs provides better performance and compression. In order to build a live image with squashfs+lz4 compression enabled you should now set LIVE_ROOTFS_TYPE = "squashfs-lz4" and ensure that live is in IMAGE_FSTYPES.

Recipes with an unconditional dependency on libpam are only buildable with pam in DISTRO_FEATURES. If the dependency is truly optional then it is recommended that the dependency be conditional upon pam being in DISTRO_FEATURES.

For EFI-based machines, the bootloader (grub-efi by default) is installed into the image at /boot. Wic can be used to split the bootloader into separate boot and rootfs partitions if necessary.

Patches whose context does not match exactly (i.e. where patch reports "fuzz" when applying) will generate a warning. For an example of this see this commit.

Layers are expected to set LAYERSERIES_COMPAT_layername to match the version(s) of OpenEmbedded-Core they are compatible with. This is specified as codenames using spaces to separate multiple values (e.g. "rocko sumo"). If a layer does not set LAYERSERIES_COMPAT_layername, a warning will is shown. If a layer sets a value that does not include the current version ("sumo" for the 2.5 release), then an error will be produced.

The TZ environment variable is set to "UTC" within the build environment in order to fix reproducibility problems in some recipes.