Yocto Project Development Tasks Manual

Follow these steps to prepare a native Linux machine as your Yocto Project development host:

Once you have completed the previous steps, you are ready to continue using a given development path on your native Linux machine. If you are going to use BitBake, see the "Cloning the poky Repository" section. If you are going to use the Extensible SDK, see the "Using the Extensible SDK" Chapter in the Yocto Project Application Development and the Extensible Software Development Kit (eSDK) manual. If you want to work on the kernel, see the Yocto Project Linux Kernel Development Manual. If you are going to use Toaster, see the "Setting Up and Using Toaster" section in the Toaster User Manual.

With CROPS, which leverages Docker Containers, you can create a Yocto Project development environment that is operating system agnostic. You can set up a container in which you can develop using the Yocto Project on a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine.

Follow these general steps to prepare a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine as your Yocto Project development host:

Once you have a container set up, everything is in place to develop just as if you were running on a native Linux machine. If you are going to use the Poky container, see the "Cloning the poky Repository" section. If you are going to use the Extensible SDK container, see the "Using the Extensible SDK" Chapter in the Yocto Project Application Development and the Extensible Software Development Kit (eSDK) manual. If you are going to use the Toaster container, see the "Setting Up and Using Toaster" section in the Toaster User Manual.

Working from a copy of the upstream Yocto Project Source Repositories is the preferred method for obtaining and using a Yocto Project release. You can view the Yocto Project Source Repositories at http://git.yoctoproject.org. In particular, you can find the poky repository at http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/.

Use the following procedure to locate the latest upstream copy of the poky Git repository:

Yocto Project maintains an Index of Releases area that contains related files that contribute to the Yocto Project. Rather than Git repositories, these files are tarballs that represent snapshots in time of a given component.

The Yocto Project Website uses a "DOWNLOADS" page from which you can locate and download tarballs of any Yocto Project release. Rather than Git repositories, these files represent snapshot tarballs.

Yocto Project maintains an area for nightly builds that contains tarball releases at https://autobuilder.yocto.io//pub/nightly/. These builds include Yocto Project releases, SDK installation scripts, and experimental builds.

Should you ever want to access a nightly build of a particular Yocto Project component, use the following procedure:

Follow these steps to create a local version of the upstream poky Git repository.

When you clone the upstream poky repository, you have access to all its development branches. Each development branch in a repository is unique as it forks off the "master" branch. To see and use the files of a particular development branch locally, you need to know the branch name and then specifically check out that development branch.

Similar to branches, the upstream repository uses tags to mark specific commits associated with significant points in a development branch (i.e. a release point or stage of a release). You might want to set up a local branch based on one of those points in the repository. The process is similar to checking out by branch name except you use tag names.

It is very easy to create your own layers to use with the OpenEmbedded build system. The Yocto Project ships with tools that speed up creating layers. This section describes the steps you perform by hand to create layers so that you can better understand them. For information about the layer-creation tools, see the "Creating a New BSP Layer Using the bitbake-layers Script" section in the Yocto Project Board Support Package (BSP) Developer's Guide and the "Creating a General Layer Using the bitbake-layers Script" section further down in this manual.

Follow these general steps to create your layer without using tools:

To create layers that are easier to maintain and that will not impact builds for other machines, you should consider the information in the following list:

When you create a layer used with the Yocto Project, it is advantageous to make sure that the layer interacts well with existing Yocto Project layers (i.e. the layer is compatible with the Yocto Project). Ensuring compatibility makes the layer easy to be consumed by others in the Yocto Project community and could allow you permission to use the Yocto Project Compatible Logo.

The Yocto Project Compatibility Program consists of a layer application process that requests permission to use the Yocto Project Compatibility Logo for your layer and application. The process consists of two parts:

To be granted permission to use the logo, you need to satisfy the following:

The remainder of this section presents information on the registration form and on the yocto-check-layer script.

     $ source oe-init-build-env
     $ yocto-check-layer your_layer_directory
                    

Before the OpenEmbedded build system can use your new layer, you need to enable it. To enable your layer, simply add your layer's path to the BBLAYERS variable in your conf/bblayers.conf file, which is found in the Build Directory. The following example shows how to enable a layer named meta-mylayer:

     # POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION is increased each time build/conf/bblayers.conf
     # changes incompatibly
     POKY_BBLAYERS_CONF_VERSION = "2"

     BBPATH = "${TOPDIR}"
     BBFILES ?= ""

     BBLAYERS ?= " \
       /home/user/poky/meta \
       /home/user/poky/meta-poky \
       /home/user/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
       /home/user/poky/meta-mylayer \
       "
                

BitBake parses each conf/layer.conf file from the top down as specified in the BBLAYERS variable within the conf/bblayers.conf file. During the processing of each conf/layer.conf file, BitBake adds the recipes, classes and configurations contained within the particular layer to the source directory.

A recipe that appends Metadata to another recipe is called a BitBake append file. A BitBake append file uses the .bbappend file type suffix, while the corresponding recipe to which Metadata is being appended uses the .bb file type suffix.

You can use a .bbappend file in your layer to make additions or changes to the content of another layer's recipe without having to copy the other layer's recipe into your layer. Your .bbappend file resides in your layer, while the main .bb recipe file to which you are appending Metadata resides in a different layer.

Being able to append information to an existing recipe not only avoids duplication, but also automatically applies recipe changes from a different layer into your layer. If you were copying recipes, you would have to manually merge changes as they occur.

When you create an append file, you must use the same root name as the corresponding recipe file. For example, the append file someapp_2.5.bbappend must apply to someapp_2.5.bb. This means the original recipe and append file names are version number-specific. If the corresponding recipe is renamed to update to a newer version, you must also rename and possibly update the corresponding .bbappend as well. During the build process, BitBake displays an error on starting if it detects a .bbappend file that does not have a corresponding recipe with a matching name. See the BB_DANGLINGAPPENDS_WARNONLY variable for information on how to handle this error.

As an example, consider the main formfactor recipe and a corresponding formfactor append file both from the Source Directory. Here is the main formfactor recipe, which is named formfactor_0.0.bb and located in the "meta" layer at meta/recipes-bsp/formfactor:

     SUMMARY = "Device formfactor information"
     SECTION = "base"
     LICENSE = "MIT"
     LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COREBASE}/meta/COPYING.MIT;md5=3da9cfbcb788c80a0384361b4de20420"
     PR = "r45"

     SRC_URI = "file://config file://machconfig"
     S = "${WORKDIR}"

     PACKAGE_ARCH = "${MACHINE_ARCH}"
     INHIBIT_DEFAULT_DEPS = "1"

     do_install() {
	     # Install file only if it has contents
             install -d ${D}${sysconfdir}/formfactor/
             install -m 0644 ${S}/config ${D}${sysconfdir}/formfactor/
	     if [ -s "${S}/machconfig" ]; then
	             install -m 0644 ${S}/machconfig ${D}${sysconfdir}/formfactor/
	     fi
     }                

In the main recipe, note the SRC_URI variable, which tells the OpenEmbedded build system where to find files during the build.

Following is the append file, which is named formfactor_0.0.bbappend and is from the Raspberry Pi BSP Layer named meta-raspberrypi. The file is in the layer at recipes-bsp/formfactor:

     FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/${PN}:"
                

By default, the build system uses the FILESPATH variable to locate files. This append file extends the locations by setting the FILESEXTRAPATHS variable. Setting this variable in the .bbappend file is the most reliable and recommended method for adding directories to the search path used by the build system to find files.

The statement in this example extends the directories to include ${THISDIR}/${PN}, which resolves to a directory named formfactor in the same directory in which the append file resides (i.e. meta-raspberrypi/recipes-bsp/formfactor. This implies that you must have the supporting directory structure set up that will contain any files or patches you will be including from the layer.

Using the immediate expansion assignment operator := is important because of the reference to THISDIR. The trailing colon character is important as it ensures that items in the list remain colon-separated.

Each layer is assigned a priority value. Priority values control which layer takes precedence if there are recipe files with the same name in multiple layers. For these cases, the recipe file from the layer with a higher priority number takes precedence. Priority values also affect the order in which multiple .bbappend files for the same recipe are applied. You can either specify the priority manually, or allow the build system to calculate it based on the layer's dependencies.

To specify the layer's priority manually, use the BBFILE_PRIORITY variable and append the layer's root name:

     BBFILE_PRIORITY_mylayer = "1"
                

You can use the BitBake layer management tool bitbake-layers to provide a view into the structure of recipes across a multi-layer project. Being able to generate output that reports on configured layers with their paths and priorities and on .bbappend files and their applicable recipes can help to reveal potential problems.

For help on the BitBake layer management tool, use the following command:

     $ bitbake-layers --help
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     usage: bitbake-layers [-d] [-q] [-F] [--color COLOR] [-h] <subcommand> ...

     BitBake layers utility

     optional arguments:
       -d, --debug           Enable debug output
       -q, --quiet           Print only errors
       -F, --force           Force add without recipe parse verification
       --color COLOR         Colorize output (where COLOR is auto, always, never)
       -h, --help            show this help message and exit

     subcommands:
       <subcommand>
         show-layers         show current configured layers.
         show-overlayed      list overlayed recipes (where the same recipe exists
                             in another layer)
         show-recipes        list available recipes, showing the layer they are
                             provided by
         show-appends        list bbappend files and recipe files they apply to
         show-cross-depends  Show dependencies between recipes that cross layer
                             boundaries.
         add-layer           Add one or more layers to bblayers.conf.
         remove-layer        Remove one or more layers from bblayers.conf.
         flatten             flatten layer configuration into a separate output
                             directory.
         layerindex-fetch    Fetches a layer from a layer index along with its
                             dependent layers, and adds them to conf/bblayers.conf.
         layerindex-show-depends
                             Find layer dependencies from layer index.
         create-layer        Create a basic layer

     Use bitbake-layers <subcommand> --help to get help on a specific command
                

The following list describes the available commands:

The bitbake-layers script with the create-layer subcommand simplifies creating a new general layer.

The default mode of the script's operation with this subcommand is to create a layer with the following:

In its simplest form, you can use the following command form to create a layer. The command creates a layer whose name corresponds to your_layer_name in the current directory:

     $ bitbake-layers create-layer your_layer_name
                

As an example, the following command creates a layer named meta-scottrif in your home directory:

     $ cd /usr/home
     $ bitbake-layers create-layer meta-scottrif
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     Add your new layer with 'bitbake-layers add-layer meta-scottrif'
                

If you want to set the priority of the layer to other than the default value of "6", you can either use the ‐‐priority option or you can edit the BBFILE_PRIORITY value in the conf/layer.conf after the script creates it. Furthermore, if you want to give the example recipe file some name other than the default, you can use the ‐‐example-recipe-name option.

The easiest way to see how the bitbake-layers create-layer command works is to experiment with the script. You can also read the usage information by entering the following:

     $ bitbake-layers create-layer --help
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     usage: bitbake-layers create-layer [-h] [--priority PRIORITY]
                                        [--example-recipe-name EXAMPLERECIPE]
                                        layerdir

     Create a basic layer

     positional arguments:
       layerdir              Layer directory to create

     optional arguments:
       -h, --help            show this help message and exit
       --priority PRIORITY, -p PRIORITY
                             Layer directory to create
       --example-recipe-name EXAMPLERECIPE, -e EXAMPLERECIPE
                             Filename of the example recipe
                

Once you create your general layer, you must add it to your bblayers.conf file. Adding the layer to this configuration file makes the OpenEmbedded build system aware of your layer so that it can search it for metadata.

Add your layer by using the bitbake-layers add-layer command:

     $ bitbake-layers add-layer your_layer_name
                

Here is an example that adds a layer named meta-scottrif to the configuration file. Following the command that adds the layer is another bitbake-layers command that shows the layers that are in your bblayers.conf file:

     $ bitbake-layers add-layer meta-scottrif
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     Parsing recipes: 100% |##########################################################| Time: 0:00:49
     Parsing of 1441 .bb files complete (0 cached, 1441 parsed). 2055 targets, 56 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
     $ bitbake-layers show-layers
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     layer                 path                                      priority
     ==========================================================================
     meta                  /home/scottrif/poky/meta                  5
     meta-poky             /home/scottrif/poky/meta-poky             5
     meta-yocto-bsp        /home/scottrif/poky/meta-yocto-bsp        5
     workspace             /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace       99
     meta-scottrif         /home/scottrif/poky/build/meta-scottrif   6
                

Adding the layer to this file enables the build system to locate the layer during the build.

Probably the easiest way to customize an image is to add a package by way of the local.conf configuration file. Because it is limited to local use, this method generally only allows you to add packages and is not as flexible as creating your own customized image. When you add packages using local variables this way, you need to realize that these variable changes are in effect for every build and consequently affect all images, which might not be what you require.

To add a package to your image using the local configuration file, use the IMAGE_INSTALL variable with the _append operator:

     IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " strace"
                

Use of the syntax is important - specifically, the space between the quote and the package name, which is strace in this example. This space is required since the _append operator does not add the space.

Furthermore, you must use _append instead of the += operator if you want to avoid ordering issues. The reason for this is because doing so unconditionally appends to the variable and avoids ordering problems due to the variable being set in image recipes and .bbclass files with operators like ?=. Using _append ensures the operation takes affect.

As shown in its simplest use, IMAGE_INSTALL_append affects all images. It is possible to extend the syntax so that the variable applies to a specific image only. Here is an example:

     IMAGE_INSTALL_append_pn-core-image-minimal = " strace"
                

This example adds strace to the core-image-minimal image only.

You can add packages using a similar approach through the CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL variable. If you use this variable, only core-image-* images are affected.

Another method for customizing your image is to enable or disable high-level image features by using the IMAGE_FEATURES and EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES variables. Although the functions for both variables are nearly equivalent, best practices dictate using IMAGE_FEATURES from within a recipe and using EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES from within your local.conf file, which is found in the Build Directory.

To understand how these features work, the best reference is meta/classes/core-image.bbclass. This class lists out the available IMAGE_FEATURES of which most map to package groups while some, such as debug-tweaks and read-only-rootfs, resolve as general configuration settings.

In summary, the file looks at the contents of the IMAGE_FEATURES variable and then maps or configures the feature accordingly. Based on this information, the build system automatically adds the appropriate packages or configurations to the IMAGE_INSTALL variable. Effectively, you are enabling extra features by extending the class or creating a custom class for use with specialized image .bb files.

Use the EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES variable from within your local configuration file. Using a separate area from which to enable features with this variable helps you avoid overwriting the features in the image recipe that are enabled with IMAGE_FEATURES. The value of EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES is added to IMAGE_FEATURES within meta/conf/bitbake.conf.

To illustrate how you can use these variables to modify your image, consider an example that selects the SSH server. The Yocto Project ships with two SSH servers you can use with your images: Dropbear and OpenSSH. Dropbear is a minimal SSH server appropriate for resource-constrained environments, while OpenSSH is a well-known standard SSH server implementation. By default, the core-image-sato image is configured to use Dropbear. The core-image-full-cmdline and core-image-lsb images both include OpenSSH. The core-image-minimal image does not contain an SSH server.

You can customize your image and change these defaults. Edit the IMAGE_FEATURES variable in your recipe or use the EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES in your local.conf file so that it configures the image you are working with to include ssh-server-dropbear or ssh-server-openssh.

You can also customize an image by creating a custom recipe that defines additional software as part of the image. The following example shows the form for the two lines you need:

     IMAGE_INSTALL = "packagegroup-core-x11-base package1 package2"

     inherit core-image
                

Defining the software using a custom recipe gives you total control over the contents of the image. It is important to use the correct names of packages in the IMAGE_INSTALL variable. You must use the OpenEmbedded notation and not the Debian notation for the names (e.g. glibc-dev instead of libc6-dev).

The other method for creating a custom image is to base it on an existing image. For example, if you want to create an image based on core-image-sato but add the additional package strace to the image, copy the meta/recipes-sato/images/core-image-sato.bb to a new .bb and add the following line to the end of the copy:

     IMAGE_INSTALL += "strace"
                

For complex custom images, the best approach for customizing an image is to create a custom package group recipe that is used to build the image or images. A good example of a package group recipe is meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb.

If you examine that recipe, you see that the PACKAGES variable lists the package group packages to produce. The inherit packagegroup statement sets appropriate default values and automatically adds -dev, -dbg, and -ptest complementary packages for each package specified in the PACKAGES statement.

For each package you specify in PACKAGES, you can use RDEPENDS and RRECOMMENDS entries to provide a list of packages the parent task package should contain. You can see examples of these further down in the packagegroup-base.bb recipe.

Here is a short, fabricated example showing the same basic pieces:

     DESCRIPTION = "My Custom Package Groups"

     inherit packagegroup

     PACKAGES = "\
         packagegroup-custom-apps \
         packagegroup-custom-tools \
         "

     RDEPENDS_packagegroup-custom-apps = "\
         dropbear \
         portmap \
         psplash"

     RDEPENDS_packagegroup-custom-tools = "\
         oprofile \
         oprofileui-server \
         lttng-tools"

     RRECOMMENDS_packagegroup-custom-tools = "\
         kernel-module-oprofile"
                

In the previous example, two package group packages are created with their dependencies and their recommended package dependencies listed: packagegroup-custom-apps, and packagegroup-custom-tools. To build an image using these package group packages, you need to add packagegroup-custom-apps and/or packagegroup-custom-tools to IMAGE_INSTALL. For other forms of image dependencies see the other areas of this section.

By default, the configured hostname (i.e. /etc/hostname) in an image is the same as the machine name. For example, if MACHINE equals "qemux86", the configured hostname written to /etc/hostname is "qemux86".

You can customize this name by altering the value of the "hostname" variable in the base-files recipe using either an append file or a configuration file. Use the following in an append file:

     hostname="myhostname"
                

Use the following in a configuration file:

     hostname_pn-base-files = "myhostname"
                

Changing the default value of the variable "hostname" can be useful in certain situations. For example, suppose you need to do extensive testing on an image and you would like to easily identify the image under test from existing images with typical default hostnames. In this situation, you could change the default hostname to "testme", which results in all the images using the name "testme". Once testing is complete and you do not need to rebuild the image for test any longer, you can easily reset the default hostname.

Another point of interest is that if you unset the variable, the image will have no default hostname in the filesystem. Here is an example that unsets the variable in a configuration file:

     hostname_pn-base-files = ""
                

Having no default hostname in the filesystem is suitable for environments that use dynamic hostnames such as virtual machines.

The following figure shows the basic process for creating a new recipe. The remainder of the section provides details for the steps.

You can always write a recipe from scratch. However, three choices exist that can help you quickly get a start on a new recipe:

     $ recipetool -h
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     usage: recipetool [-d] [-q] [--color COLOR] [-h] <subcommand> ...

     OpenEmbedded recipe tool

     options:
       -d, --debug     Enable debug output
       -q, --quiet     Print only errors
       --color COLOR   Colorize output (where COLOR is auto, always, never)
       -h, --help      show this help message and exit

     subcommands:
       create          Create a new recipe
       newappend       Create a bbappend for the specified target in the specified
                       layer
       setvar          Set a variable within a recipe
       appendfile      Create/update a bbappend to replace a target file
       appendsrcfiles  Create/update a bbappend to add or replace source files
       appendsrcfile   Create/update a bbappend to add or replace a source file
     Use recipetool <subcommand> --help to get help on a specific command
                    

     recipetool create -o OUTFILE source
                    

     recipetool create -o OUTFILE -x EXTERNALSRC source
                    

     recipetool create -d -o OUTFILE source
                    

Once you have your base recipe, you should put it in your own layer and name it appropriately. Locating it correctly ensures that the OpenEmbedded build system can find it when you use BitBake to process the recipe.

Creating a new recipe is usually an iterative process that requires using BitBake to process the recipe multiple times in order to progressively discover and add information to the recipe file.

Assuming you have sourced the build environment setup script (i.e. oe-init-build-env) and you are in the Build Directory, use BitBake to process your recipe. All you need to provide is the basename of the recipe as described in the previous section:

     $ bitbake basename
                

During the build, the OpenEmbedded build system creates a temporary work directory for each recipe (${WORKDIR}) where it keeps extracted source files, log files, intermediate compilation and packaging files, and so forth.

The path to the per-recipe temporary work directory depends on the context in which it is being built. The quickest way to find this path is to have BitBake return it by running the following:

     $ bitbake -e basename | grep ^WORKDIR=
                

As an example, assume a Source Directory top-level folder named poky, a default Build Directory at poky/build, and a qemux86-poky-linux machine target system. Furthermore, suppose your recipe is named foo_1.3.0.bb. In this case, the work directory the build system uses to build the package would be as follows:

     poky/build/tmp/work/qemux86-poky-linux/foo/1.3.0-r0
                

Inside this directory you can find sub-directories such as image, packages-split, and temp. After the build, you can examine these to determine how well the build went.

You can find more information about the build process in "The Yocto Project Development Environment" chapter of the Yocto Project Overview and Concepts Manual.

The first thing your recipe must do is specify how to fetch the source files. Fetching is controlled mainly through the SRC_URI variable. Your recipe must have a SRC_URI variable that points to where the source is located. For a graphical representation of source locations, see the "Sources" section in the Yocto Project Overview and Concepts Manual.

The do_fetch task uses the prefix of each entry in the SRC_URI variable value to determine which fetcher to use to get your source files. It is the SRC_URI variable that triggers the fetcher. The do_patch task uses the variable after source is fetched to apply patches. The OpenEmbedded build system uses FILESOVERRIDES for scanning directory locations for local files in SRC_URI.

The SRC_URI variable in your recipe must define each unique location for your source files. It is good practice to not hard-code pathnames in an URL used in SRC_URI. Rather than hard-code these paths, use ${PV}, which causes the fetch process to use the version specified in the recipe filename. Specifying the version in this manner means that upgrading the recipe to a future version is as simple as renaming the recipe to match the new version.

Here is a simple example from the meta/recipes-devtools/cdrtools/cdrtools-native_3.01a20.bb recipe where the source comes from a single tarball. Notice the use of the PV variable:

     SRC_URI = "ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/cdrtools-${PV}.tar.bz2"
                

Files mentioned in SRC_URI whose names end in a typical archive extension (e.g. .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .zip, and so forth), are automatically extracted during the do_unpack task. For another example that specifies these types of files, see the "Autotooled Package" section.

Another way of specifying source is from an SCM. For Git repositories, you must specify SRCREV and you should specify PV to include the revision with SRCPV. Here is an example from the recipe meta/recipes-kernel/blktrace/blktrace_git.bb:

     SRCREV = "d6918c8832793b4205ed3bfede78c2f915c23385"

     PR = "r6"
     PV = "1.0.5+git${SRCPV}"

     SRC_URI = "git://git.kernel.dk/blktrace.git \
                file://ldflags.patch"
                

If your SRC_URI statement includes URLs pointing to individual files fetched from a remote server other than a version control system, BitBake attempts to verify the files against checksums defined in your recipe to ensure they have not been tampered with or otherwise modified since the recipe was written. Two checksums are used: SRC_URI[md5sum] and SRC_URI[sha256sum].

If your SRC_URI variable points to more than a single URL (excluding SCM URLs), you need to provide the md5 and sha256 checksums for each URL. For these cases, you provide a name for each URL as part of the SRC_URI and then reference that name in the subsequent checksum statements. Here is an example:

     SRC_URI = "${DEBIAN_MIRROR}/main/a/apmd/apmd_3.2.2.orig.tar.gz;name=tarball \
                ${DEBIAN_MIRROR}/main/a/apmd/apmd_${PV}.diff.gz;name=patch"

     SRC_URI[tarball.md5sum] = "b1e6309e8331e0f4e6efd311c2d97fa8"
     SRC_URI[tarball.sha256sum] = "7f7d9f60b7766b852881d40b8ff91d8e39fccb0d1d913102a5c75a2dbb52332d"

     SRC_URI[patch.md5sum] = "57e1b689264ea80f78353519eece0c92"
     SRC_URI[patch.sha256sum] = "7905ff96be93d725544d0040e425c42f9c05580db3c272f11cff75b9aa89d430"
                

Proper values for md5 and sha256 checksums might be available with other signatures on the download page for the upstream source (e.g. md5, sha1, sha256, GPG, and so forth). Because the OpenEmbedded build system only deals with sha256sum and md5sum, you should verify all the signatures you find by hand.

If no SRC_URI checksums are specified when you attempt to build the recipe, or you provide an incorrect checksum, the build will produce an error for each missing or incorrect checksum. As part of the error message, the build system provides the checksum string corresponding to the fetched file. Once you have the correct checksums, you can copy and paste them into your recipe and then run the build again to continue.

This final example is a bit more complicated and is from the meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode_9.20.bb recipe. The example's SRC_URI statement identifies multiple files as the source files for the recipe: a tarball, a patch file, a desktop file, and an icon.

     SRC_URI = "http://dist.schmorp.de/rxvt-unicode/Attic/rxvt-unicode-${PV}.tar.bz2 \
                file://xwc.patch \
                file://rxvt.desktop \
                file://rxvt.png"
                

When you specify local files using the file:// URI protocol, the build system fetches files from the local machine. The path is relative to the FILESPATH variable and searches specific directories in a certain order: ${BP}, ${BPN}, and files. The directories are assumed to be subdirectories of the directory in which the recipe or append file resides. For another example that specifies these types of files, see the "Single .c File Package (Hello World!)" section.

The previous example also specifies a patch file. Patch files are files whose names usually end in .patch or .diff but can end with compressed suffixes such as diff.gz and patch.bz2, for example. The build system automatically applies patches as described in the "Patching Code" section.

During the build, the do_unpack task unpacks the source with ${S} pointing to where it is unpacked.

If you are fetching your source files from an upstream source archived tarball and the tarball's internal structure matches the common convention of a top-level subdirectory named ${BPN}-${PV}, then you do not need to set S. However, if SRC_URI specifies to fetch source from an archive that does not use this convention, or from an SCM like Git or Subversion, your recipe needs to define S.

If processing your recipe using BitBake successfully unpacks the source files, you need to be sure that the directory pointed to by ${S} matches the structure of the source.

Sometimes it is necessary to patch code after it has been fetched. Any files mentioned in SRC_URI whose names end in .patch or .diff or compressed versions of these suffixes (e.g. diff.gz are treated as patches. The do_patch task automatically applies these patches.

The build system should be able to apply patches with the "-p1" option (i.e. one directory level in the path will be stripped off). If your patch needs to have more directory levels stripped off, specify the number of levels using the "striplevel" option in the SRC_URI entry for the patch. Alternatively, if your patch needs to be applied in a specific subdirectory that is not specified in the patch file, use the "patchdir" option in the entry.

As with all local files referenced in SRC_URI using file://, you should place patch files in a directory next to the recipe either named the same as the base name of the recipe (BP and BPN) or "files".

Your recipe needs to have both the LICENSE and LIC_FILES_CHKSUM variables:

Most software packages have a short list of other packages that they require, which are called dependencies. These dependencies fall into two main categories: build-time dependencies, which are required when the software is built; and runtime dependencies, which are required to be installed on the target in order for the software to run.

Within a recipe, you specify build-time dependencies using the DEPENDS variable. Although nuances exist, items specified in DEPENDS should be names of other recipes. It is important that you specify all build-time dependencies explicitly. If you do not, due to the parallel nature of BitBake's execution, you can end up with a race condition where the dependency is present for one task of a recipe (e.g. do_configure) and then gone when the next task runs (e.g. do_compile).

Another consideration is that configure scripts might automatically check for optional dependencies and enable corresponding functionality if those dependencies are found. This behavior means that to ensure deterministic results and thus avoid more race conditions, you need to either explicitly specify these dependencies as well, or tell the configure script explicitly to disable the functionality. If you wish to make a recipe that is more generally useful (e.g. publish the recipe in a layer for others to use), instead of hard-disabling the functionality, you can use the PACKAGECONFIG variable to allow functionality and the corresponding dependencies to be enabled and disabled easily by other users of the recipe.

Similar to build-time dependencies, you specify runtime dependencies through a variable - RDEPENDS, which is package-specific. All variables that are package-specific need to have the name of the package added to the end as an override. Since the main package for a recipe has the same name as the recipe, and the recipe's name can be found through the ${PN} variable, then you specify the dependencies for the main package by setting RDEPENDS_${PN}. If the package were named ${PN}-tools, then you would set RDEPENDS_${PN}-tools, and so forth.

Some runtime dependencies will be set automatically at packaging time. These dependencies include any shared library dependencies (i.e. if a package "example" contains "libexample" and another package "mypackage" contains a binary that links to "libexample" then the OpenEmbedded build system will automatically add a runtime dependency to "mypackage" on "example"). See the "Automatically Added Runtime Dependencies" section in the Yocto Project Overview and Concepts Manual for further details.

Most software provides some means of setting build-time configuration options before compilation. Typically, setting these options is accomplished by running a configure script with some options, or by modifying a build configuration file.

A major part of build-time configuration is about checking for build-time dependencies and possibly enabling optional functionality as a result. You need to specify any build-time dependencies for the software you are building in your recipe's DEPENDS value, in terms of other recipes that satisfy those dependencies. You can often find build-time or runtime dependencies described in the software's documentation.

The following list provides configuration items of note based on how your software is built:

Once configuration succeeds, it is always good practice to look at the log.do_configure file to ensure that the appropriate options have been enabled and no additional build-time dependencies need to be added to DEPENDS. For example, if the configure script reports that it found something not mentioned in DEPENDS, or that it did not find something that it needed for some desired optional functionality, then you would need to add those to DEPENDS. Looking at the log might also reveal items being checked for, enabled, or both that you do not want, or items not being found that are in DEPENDS, in which case you would need to look at passing extra options to the configure script as needed. For reference information on configure options specific to the software you are building, you can consult the output of the ./configure --help command within ${S} or consult the software's upstream documentation.

If your recipe builds an application that needs to communicate with some device or needs an API into a custom kernel, you will need to provide appropriate header files. Under no circumstances should you ever modify the existing meta/recipes-kernel/linux-libc-headers/linux-libc-headers.inc file. These headers are used to build libc and must not be compromised with custom or machine-specific header information. If you customize libc through modified headers all other applications that use libc thus become affected.

The correct way to interface to a device or custom kernel is to use a separate package that provides the additional headers for the driver or other unique interfaces. When doing so, your application also becomes responsible for creating a dependency on that specific provider.

Consider the following:

For example, suppose you want to modify an existing header that adds I/O control or network support. If the modifications are used by a small number programs, providing a unique version of a header is easy and has little impact. When doing so, bear in mind the guidelines in the previous list.

Consider a case where your kernel is older and you need an older libc ABI. The headers installed by your recipe should still be a standard mainline kernel, not your own custom one.

When you use custom kernel headers you need to get them from STAGING_KERNEL_DIR, which is the directory with kernel headers that are required to build out-of-tree modules. Your recipe will also need the following:

     do_configure[depends] += "virtual/kernel:do_shared_workdir"
                

During a build, the do_compile task happens after source is fetched, unpacked, and configured. If the recipe passes through do_compile successfully, nothing needs to be done.

However, if the compile step fails, you need to diagnose the failure. Here are some common issues that cause failures.

During do_install, the task copies the built files along with their hierarchy to locations that would mirror their locations on the target device. The installation process copies files from the ${S}, ${B}, and ${WORKDIR} directories to the ${D} directory to create the structure as it should appear on the target system.

How your software is built affects what you must do to be sure your software is installed correctly. The following list describes what you must do for installation depending on the type of build system used by the software being built:

For the scenarios that do not use Autotools or CMake, you need to track the installation and diagnose and fix any issues until everything installs correctly. You need to look in the default location of ${D}, which is ${WORKDIR}/image, to be sure your files have been installed correctly.

If you want to install a service, which is a process that usually starts on boot and runs in the background, then you must include some additional definitions in your recipe.

If you are adding services and the service initialization script or the service file itself is not installed, you must provide for that installation in your recipe using a do_install_append function. If your recipe already has a do_install function, update the function near its end rather than adding an additional do_install_append function.

When you create the installation for your services, you need to accomplish what is normally done by make install. In other words, make sure your installation arranges the output similar to how it is arranged on the target system.

The OpenEmbedded build system provides support for starting services two different ways:

Successful packaging is a combination of automated processes performed by the OpenEmbedded build system and some specific steps you need to take. The following list describes the process:

Recipes often need to use files provided by other recipes on the build host. For example, an application linking to a common library needs access to the library itself and its associated headers. The way this access is accomplished is by populating a sysroot with files. Each recipe has two sysroots in its work directory, one for target files (recipe-sysroot) and one for files that are native to the build host (recipe-sysroot-native).

Recipes should never populate the sysroot directly (i.e. write files into sysroot). Instead, files should be installed into standard locations during the do_install task within the ${D} directory. The reason for this limitation is that almost all files that populate the sysroot are cataloged in manifests in order to ensure the files can be removed later when a recipe is either modified or removed. Thus, the sysroot is able to remain free from stale files.

A subset of the files installed by the do_install task are used by the do_populate_sysroot task as defined by the the SYSROOT_DIRS variable to automatically populate the sysroot. It is possible to modify the list of directories that populate the sysroot. The following example shows how you could add the /opt directory to the list of directories within a recipe:

     SYSROOT_DIRS += "/opt"
                

For a more complete description of the do_populate_sysroot task and its associated functions, see the staging class.

Prior to a build, if you know that several different recipes provide the same functionality, you can use a virtual provider (i.e. virtual/*) as a placeholder for the actual provider. The actual provider is determined at build-time.

A common scenario where a virtual provider is used would be for the kernel recipe. Suppose you have three kernel recipes whose PN values map to kernel-big, kernel-mid, and kernel-small. Furthermore, each of these recipes in some way uses a PROVIDES statement that essentially identifies itself as being able to provide virtual/kernel. Here is one way through the kernel class:

     PROVIDES += "${@ "virtual/kernel" if (d.getVar("KERNEL_PACKAGE_NAME") == "kernel") else "" }"
                

Any recipe that inherits the kernel class is going to utilize a PROVIDES statement that identifies that recipe as being able to provide the virtual/kernel item.

Now comes the time to actually build an image and you need a kernel recipe, but which one? You can configure your build to call out the kernel recipe you want by using the PREFERRED_PROVIDER variable. As an example, consider the x86-base.inc include file, which is a machine (i.e. MACHINE) configuration file. This include file is the reason all x86-based machines use the linux-yocto kernel. Here are the relevant lines from the include file:

     PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel ??= "linux-yocto"
     PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-yocto ??= "4.15%"
                

When you use a virtual provider, you do not have to "hard code" a recipe name as a build dependency. You can use the DEPENDS variable to state the build is dependent on virtual/kernel for example:

     DEPENDS = "virtual/kernel"
                

During the build, the OpenEmbedded build system picks the correct recipe needed for the virtual/kernel dependency based on the PREFERRED_PROVIDER variable. If you want to use the small kernel mentioned at the beginning of this section, configure your build as follows:

     PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel ??= "kernel-small"
                

The following lists specific examples of virtual providers:

Sometimes the name of a recipe can lead to versioning problems when the recipe is upgraded to a final release. For example, consider the irssi_0.8.16-rc1.bb recipe file in the list of example recipes in the "Storing and Naming the Recipe" section. This recipe is at a release candidate stage (i.e. "rc1"). When the recipe is released, the recipe filename becomes irssi_0.8.16.bb. The version change from 0.8.16-rc1 to 0.8.16 is seen as a decrease by the build system and package managers, so the resulting packages will not correctly trigger an upgrade.

In order to ensure the versions compare properly, the recommended convention is to set PV within the recipe to "previous_version+current_version". You can use an additional variable so that you can use the current version elsewhere. Here is an example:

     REALPV = "0.8.16-rc1"
     PV = "0.8.15+${REALPV}"
                

Post-installation scripts run immediately after installing a package on the target or during image creation when a package is included in an image. To add a post-installation script to a package, add a pkg_postinst_PACKAGENAME() function to the recipe file (.bb) and replace PACKAGENAME with the name of the package you want to attach to the postinst script. To apply the post-installation script to the main package for the recipe, which is usually what is required, specify ${PN} in place of PACKAGENAME.

A post-installation function has the following structure:

     pkg_postinst_PACKAGENAME() {
     # Commands to carry out
     }
                

The script defined in the post-installation function is called when the root filesystem is created. If the script succeeds, the package is marked as installed. If the script fails, the package is marked as unpacked and the script is executed when the image boots again.

Sometimes it is necessary for the execution of a post-installation script to be delayed until the first boot. For example, the script might need to be executed on the device itself. To delay script execution until boot time, use the following structure in the post-installation script:

     pkg_postinst_PACKAGENAME() {
     if [ x"$D" = "x" ]; then
          # Actions to carry out on the device go here
     else
          exit 1
     fi
     }
                

The previous example delays execution until the image boots again because the environment variable D points to the directory containing the image when the root filesystem is created at build time but is unset when executed on the first boot.

If you have recipes that use pkg_postinst scripts and they require the use of non-standard native tools that have dependencies during rootfs construction, you need to use the PACKAGE_WRITE_DEPS variable in your recipe to list these tools. If you do not use this variable, the tools might be missing and execution of the post-installation script is deferred until first boot. Deferring the script to first boot is undesirable and for read-only rootfs impossible.

The final step for completing your recipe is to be sure that the software you built runs correctly. To accomplish runtime testing, add the build's output packages to your image and test them on the target.

For information on how to customize your image by adding specific packages, see the "Customizing Images" section.

To help summarize how to write a recipe, this section provides some examples given various scenarios:

     SUMMARY = "Simple helloworld application"
     SECTION = "examples"
     LICENSE = "MIT"
     LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT;md5=0835ade698e0bcf8506ecda2f7b4f302"

     SRC_URI = "file://helloworld.c"

     S = "${WORKDIR}"

     do_compile() {
     	${CC} helloworld.c -o helloworld
     }

     do_install() {
     	install -d ${D}${bindir}
     	install -m 0755 helloworld ${D}${bindir}
     }
                    

     SUMMARY = "GNU Helloworld application"
     SECTION = "examples"
     LICENSE = "GPLv2+"
     LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=751419260aa954499f7abaabaa882bbe"

     SRC_URI = "${GNU_MIRROR}/hello/hello-${PV}.tar.gz"

     inherit autotools gettext
                     

     CFLAGS_prepend = "-I ${S}/include "
                    

     SUMMARY = "Tools for managing memory technology devices"
     SECTION = "base"
     DEPENDS = "zlib lzo e2fsprogs util-linux"
     HOMEPAGE = "http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/"
     LICENSE = "GPLv2+"
     LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=0636e73ff0215e8d672dc4c32c317bb3 \
                         file://include/common.h;beginline=1;endline=17;md5=ba05b07912a44ea2bf81ce409380049c"

     # Use the latest version at 26 Oct, 2013
     SRCREV = "9f107132a6a073cce37434ca9cda6917dd8d866b"
     SRC_URI = "git://git.infradead.org/mtd-utils.git \
                     file://add-exclusion-to-mkfs-jffs2-git-2.patch \
     "

     PV = "1.5.1+git${SRCPV}"

     S = "${WORKDIR}/git"

     EXTRA_OEMAKE = "'CC=${CC}' 'RANLIB=${RANLIB}' 'AR=${AR}' 'CFLAGS=${CFLAGS} -I${S}/include -DWITHOUT_XATTR' 'BUILDDIR=${S}'"

     do_install () {
             oe_runmake install DESTDIR=${D} SBINDIR=${sbindir} MANDIR=${mandir} INCLUDEDIR=${includedir}
     }

     PACKAGES =+ "mtd-utils-jffs2 mtd-utils-ubifs mtd-utils-misc"

     FILES_mtd-utils-jffs2 = "${sbindir}/mkfs.jffs2 ${sbindir}/jffs2dump ${sbindir}/jffs2reader ${sbindir}/sumtool"
     FILES_mtd-utils-ubifs = "${sbindir}/mkfs.ubifs ${sbindir}/ubi*"
     FILES_mtd-utils-misc = "${sbindir}/nftl* ${sbindir}/ftl* ${sbindir}/rfd* ${sbindir}/doc* ${sbindir}/serve_image ${sbindir}/recv_image"

     PARALLEL_MAKE = ""

     BBCLASSEXTEND = "native"
                    

     require xorg-lib-common.inc

     SUMMARY = "Xpm: X Pixmap extension library"
     LICENSE = "BSD"
     LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=51f4270b012ecd4ab1a164f5f4ed6cf7"
     DEPENDS += "libxext libsm libxt"
     PE = "1"

     XORG_PN = "libXpm"

     PACKAGES =+ "sxpm cxpm"
     FILES_cxpm = "${bindir}/cxpm"
     FILES_sxpm = "${bindir}/sxpm"
                    

When writing recipes, it is good to conform to existing style guidelines. The OpenEmbedded Styleguide wiki page provides rough guidelines for preferred recipe style.

It is common for existing recipes to deviate a bit from this style. However, aiming for at least a consistent style is a good idea. Some practices, such as omitting spaces around = operators in assignments or ordering recipe components in an erratic way, are widely seen as poor style.

Understanding recipe file syntax is important for writing recipes. The following list overviews the basic items that make up a BitBake recipe file. For more complete BitBake syntax descriptions, see the "Syntax and Operators" chapter of the BitBake User Manual.

This next list summarizes the most important and most commonly used parts of the recipe syntax. For more information on these parts of the syntax, you can reference the Syntax and Operators chapter in the BitBake User Manual.

To add a new machine, you need to add a new machine configuration file to the layer's conf/machine directory. This configuration file provides details about the device you are adding.

The OpenEmbedded build system uses the root name of the machine configuration file to reference the new machine. For example, given a machine configuration file named crownbay.conf, the build system recognizes the machine as "crownbay".

The most important variables you must set in your machine configuration file or include from a lower-level configuration file are as follows:

You might also need these variables:

You can find full details on these variables in the reference section. You can leverage existing machine .conf files from meta-yocto-bsp/conf/machine/.

The OpenEmbedded build system needs to be able to build a kernel for the machine. You need to either create a new kernel recipe for this machine, or extend an existing kernel recipe. You can find several kernel recipe examples in the Source Directory at meta/recipes-kernel/linux that you can use as references.

If you are creating a new kernel recipe, normal recipe-writing rules apply for setting up a SRC_URI. Thus, you need to specify any necessary patches and set S to point at the source code. You need to create a do_configure task that configures the unpacked kernel with a defconfig file. You can do this by using a make defconfig command or, more commonly, by copying in a suitable defconfig file and then running make oldconfig. By making use of inherit kernel and potentially some of the linux-*.inc files, most other functionality is centralized and the defaults of the class normally work well.

If you are extending an existing kernel recipe, it is usually a matter of adding a suitable defconfig file. The file needs to be added into a location similar to defconfig files used for other machines in a given kernel recipe. A possible way to do this is by listing the file in the SRC_URI and adding the machine to the expression in COMPATIBLE_MACHINE:

     COMPATIBLE_MACHINE = '(qemux86|qemumips)'
                

For more information on defconfig files, see the "Changing the Configuration" section in the Yocto Project Linux Kernel Development Manual.

A formfactor configuration file provides information about the target hardware for which the image is being built and information that the build system cannot obtain from other sources such as the kernel. Some examples of information contained in a formfactor configuration file include framebuffer orientation, whether or not the system has a keyboard, the positioning of the keyboard in relation to the screen, and the screen resolution.

The build system uses reasonable defaults in most cases. However, if customization is necessary, you need to create a machconfig file in the meta/recipes-bsp/formfactor/files directory. This directory contains directories for specific machines such as qemuarm and qemux86. For information about the settings available and the defaults, see the meta/recipes-bsp/formfactor/files/config file found in the same area.

Following is an example for "qemuarm" machine:

     HAVE_TOUCHSCREEN=1
     HAVE_KEYBOARD=1

     DISPLAY_CAN_ROTATE=0
     DISPLAY_ORIENTATION=0
     #DISPLAY_WIDTH_PIXELS=640
     #DISPLAY_HEIGHT_PIXELS=480
     #DISPLAY_BPP=16
     DISPLAY_DPI=150
     DISPLAY_SUBPIXEL_ORDER=vrgb
                

The AUH utility works in conjunction with the OpenEmbedded build system in order to automatically generate upgrades for recipes based on new versions being published upstream. Use AUH when you want to create a service that performs the upgrades automatically and optionally sends you an email with the results.

AUH allows you to update several recipes with a single use. You can also optionally perform build and integration tests using images with the results saved to your hard drive and emails of results optionally sent to recipe maintainers. Finally, AUH creates Git commits with appropriate commit messages in the layer's tree for the changes made to recipes.

The following steps describe how to set up the AUH utility:

This next set of examples describes how to use the AUH:

Once you have run the AUH utility, you can find the results in the AUH build directory:

     ${BUILDDIR}/upgrade-helper/timestamp
                

The AUH utility also creates recipe update commits from successful upgrade attempts in the layer tree.

You can easily set up to run the AUH utility on a regular basis by using a cron job. See the weeklyjob.sh file distributed with the utility for an example.

As mentioned earlier, an alternative method for upgrading recipes to newer versions is to use devtool upgrade. You can read about devtool upgrade in general in the "Use devtool upgrade to Create a Version of the Recipe that Supports a Newer Version of the Software" section in the Yocto Project Application Development and the Extensible Software Development Kit (eSDK) Manual.

To see all the command-line options available with devtool upgrade, use the following help command:

     $ devtool upgrade -h
                

If you want to find out what version a recipe is currently at upstream without any attempt to upgrade your local version of the recipe, you can use the following command:

     $ devtool latest-version recipe_name
                

As mentioned in the previous section describing AUH, devtool upgrade works in a less-automated manner than AUH. Specifically, devtool upgrade only works on a single recipe that you name on the command line, cannot perform build and integration testing using images, and does not automatically generate commits for changes in the source tree. Despite all these "limitations", devtool upgrade updates the recipe file to the new upstream version and attempts to rebase custom patches contained by the recipe as needed.

A typical scenario involves having used Git to clone an upstream repository that you use during build operations. Because you are (or have) built the recipe in the past, the layer is likely added to your configuration already. If for some reason, the layer is not added, you could add it easily using the bitbake-layers script. For example, suppose you use the nano.bb recipe from the meta-oe layer in the meta-openembedded repository. For this example, assume that the layer has been cloned into following area:

     /home/scottrif/meta-openembedded
                

The following command from your Build Directory adds the layer to your build configuration (i.e. ${BUILDDIR}/conf/bblayers.conf):

     $ bitbake-layers add-layer /home/scottrif/meta-openembedded/meta-oe
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     Parsing recipes: 100% |##########################################| Time: 0:00:55
     Parsing of 1431 .bb files complete (0 cached, 1431 parsed). 2040 targets, 56 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
     Removing 12 recipes from the x86_64 sysroot: 100% |##############| Time: 0:00:00
     Removing 1 recipes from the x86_64_i586 sysroot: 100% |##########| Time: 0:00:00
     Removing 5 recipes from the i586 sysroot: 100% |#################| Time: 0:00:00
     Removing 5 recipes from the qemux86 sysroot: 100% |##############| Time: 0:00:00
                

For this example, assume that the nano.bb recipe that is upstream has a 2.9.3 version number. However, the version in the local repository is 2.7.4. The following command from your build directory automatically upgrades the recipe for you:

     $ devtool upgrade nano -V 2.9.3
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     NOTE: Creating workspace layer in /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace
     Parsing recipes: 100% |##########################################| Time: 0:00:46
     Parsing of 1431 .bb files complete (0 cached, 1431 parsed). 2040 targets, 56 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
     NOTE: Extracting current version source...
     NOTE: Resolving any missing task queue dependencies
            .
            .
            .
     NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
     NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
     NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 74 tasks of which 72 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.
     Adding changed files: 100% |#####################################| Time: 0:00:00
     NOTE: Upgraded source extracted to /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace/sources/nano
     NOTE: New recipe is /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace/recipes/nano/nano_2.9.3.bb
                

Continuing with this example, you can use devtool build to build the newly upgraded recipe:

     $ devtool build nano
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     Loading cache: 100% |################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:01
     Loaded 2040 entries from dependency cache.
     Parsing recipes: 100% |##############################################################################################| Time: 0:00:00
     Parsing of 1432 .bb files complete (1431 cached, 1 parsed). 2041 targets, 56 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
     NOTE: Resolving any missing task queue dependencies
            .
            .
            .
     NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
     NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
     NOTE: nano: compiling from external source tree /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace/sources/nano
     NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 520 tasks of which 304 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.
                

Within the devtool upgrade workflow, opportunity exists to deploy and test your rebuilt software. For this example, however, running devtool finish cleans up the workspace once the source in your workspace is clean. This usually means using Git to stage and submit commits for the changes generated by the upgrade process.

Once the tree is clean, you can clean things up in this example with the following command from the ${BUILDDIR}/workspace/sources/nano directory:

     $ devtool finish nano meta-oe
     NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
     Loading cache: 100% |################################################################################################| Time: 0:00:00
     Loaded 2040 entries from dependency cache.
     Parsing recipes: 100% |##############################################################################################| Time: 0:00:01
     Parsing of 1432 .bb files complete (1431 cached, 1 parsed). 2041 targets, 56 skipped, 0 masked, 0 errors.
     NOTE: Adding new patch 0001-nano.bb-Stuff-I-changed-when-upgrading-nano.bb.patch
     NOTE: Updating recipe nano_2.9.3.bb
     NOTE: Removing file /home/scottrif/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-support/nano/nano_2.7.4.bb
     NOTE: Moving recipe file to /home/scottrif/meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-support/nano
     NOTE: Leaving source tree /home/scottrif/poky/build/workspace/sources/nano as-is; if you no longer need it then please delete it manually
                

Using the devtool finish command cleans up the workspace and creates a patch file based on your commits. The tool puts all patch files back into the source directory in a sub-directory named nano in this case.

If for some reason you choose not to upgrade recipes using the Auto Upgrade Helper (AUH) or by using devtool upgrade, you can manually edit the recipe files to upgrade the versions.

To manually upgrade recipe versions, follow these general steps:

In the development environment, you need to build an image whenever you change hardware support, add or change system libraries, or add or change services that have dependencies. Several methods exist that allow you to build an image within the Yocto Project. This section presents the basic steps you need to build a simple image using BitBake from a build host running Linux.

The build process creates an entire Linux distribution from source and places it in your Build Directory under tmp/deploy/images. For detailed information on the build process using BitBake, see the "Images" section in the Yocto Project Overview and Concepts Manual.

The following figure and list overviews the build process:

Bitbake also has functionality that allows you to build multiple targets at the same time, where each target uses a different configuration.

In order to accomplish this, you setup each of the configurations you need to use in parallel by placing the configuration files in your current build directory alongside the usual local.conf file.

Follow these guidelines to create an environment that supports multiple configurations:

Support for multiple configurations in this current release of the Yocto Project (Sumo 2.5) has some known issues:

An initial RAM filesystem (initramfs) image provides a temporary root filesystem used for early system initialization (e.g. loading of modules needed to locate and mount the "real" root filesystem).

Follow these steps to create an initramfs image:

Very small distributions have some significant advantages such as requiring less on-die or in-package memory (cheaper), better performance through efficient cache usage, lower power requirements due to less memory, faster boot times, and reduced development overhead. Some real-world examples where a very small distribution gives you distinct advantages are digital cameras, medical devices, and small headless systems.

This section presents information that shows you how you can trim your distribution to even smaller sizes than the poky-tiny distribution, which is around 5 Mbytes, that can be built out-of-the-box using the Yocto Project.

     $ cd root-directory-of-image
     $ dirsize.py 100000 > dirsize-100k.log
     $ cat dirsize-100k.log
                    

     $ cd image-directory
     $ bitbake -u taskexp -g image
                    

     VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager = ""
                    

     $ cd top-level-linux-build-directory
     $ ksize.py > ksize.log
     $ cat ksize.log
                    

     $ ksize.py -d > ksize.log
                    

A common scenario developers face is creating images for several different machines that use the same software environment. In this situation, it is tempting to set the tunings and optimization flags for each build specifically for the targeted hardware (i.e. "maxing out" the tunings). Doing so can considerably add to build times and package feed maintenance collectively for the machines. For example, selecting tunes that are extremely specific to a CPU core used in a system might enable some micro optimizations in GCC for that particular system but would otherwise not gain you much of a performance difference across the other systems as compared to using a more general tuning across all the builds (e.g. setting DEFAULTTUNE specifically for each machine's build). Rather than "max out" each build's tunings, you can take steps that cause the OpenEmbedded build system to reuse software across the various machines where it makes sense.

If build speed and package feed maintenance are considerations, you should consider the points in this section that can help you optimize your tunings to best consider build times and package feed maintenance.

By default, the OpenEmbedded build system uses the Build Directory when building source code. The build process involves fetching the source files, unpacking them, and then patching them if necessary before the build takes place.

Situations exist where you might want to build software from source files that are external to and thus outside of the OpenEmbedded build system. For example, suppose you have a project that includes a new BSP with a heavily customized kernel. And, you want to minimize exposing the build system to the development team so that they can focus on their project and maintain everyone's workflow as much as possible. In this case, you want a kernel source directory on the development machine where the development occurs. You want the recipe's SRC_URI variable to point to the external directory and use it as is, not copy it.

To build from software that comes from an external source, all you need to do is inherit the externalsrc class and then set the EXTERNALSRC variable to point to your external source code. Here are the statements to put in your local.conf file:

     INHERIT += "externalsrc"
     EXTERNALSRC_pn-myrecipe = "path-to-your-source-tree"
                

This next example shows how to accomplish the same thing by setting EXTERNALSRC in the recipe itself or in the recipe's append file:

     EXTERNALSRC = "path"
     EXTERNALSRC_BUILD = "path"
                

By default, externalsrc.bbclass builds the source code in a directory separate from the external source directory as specified by EXTERNALSRC. If you need to have the source built in the same directory in which it resides, or some other nominated directory, you can set EXTERNALSRC_BUILD to point to that directory:

     EXTERNALSRC_BUILD_pn-myrecipe = "path-to-your-source-tree"
                

If you are building a library and the library offers static linking, you can control which static library files (*.a files) get included in the built library.

The PACKAGES and FILES_* variables in the meta/conf/bitbake.conf configuration file define how files installed by the do_install task are packaged. By default, the PACKAGES variable includes ${PN}-staticdev, which represents all static library files.

Following is part of the BitBake configuration file, where you can see how the static library files are defined:

     PACKAGE_BEFORE_PN ?= ""
     PACKAGES = "${PN}-dbg ${PN}-staticdev ${PN}-dev ${PN}-doc ${PN}-locale ${PACKAGE_BEFORE_PN} ${PN}"
     PACKAGES_DYNAMIC = "^${PN}-locale-.*"
     FILES = ""

     FILES_${PN} = "${bindir}/* ${sbindir}/* ${libexecdir}/* ${libdir}/lib*${SOLIBS} \
                 ${sysconfdir} ${sharedstatedir} ${localstatedir} \
                 ${base_bindir}/* ${base_sbindir}/* \
                 ${base_libdir}/*${SOLIBS} \
                 ${base_prefix}/lib/udev/rules.d ${prefix}/lib/udev/rules.d \
                 ${datadir}/${BPN} ${libdir}/${BPN}/* \
                 ${datadir}/pixmaps ${datadir}/applications \
                 ${datadir}/idl ${datadir}/omf ${datadir}/sounds \
                 ${libdir}/bonobo/servers"

     FILES_${PN}-bin = "${bindir}/* ${sbindir}/*"

     FILES_${PN}-doc = "${docdir} ${mandir} ${infodir} ${datadir}/gtk-doc \
                 ${datadir}/gnome/help"
     SECTION_${PN}-doc = "doc"

     FILES_SOLIBSDEV ?= "${base_libdir}/lib*${SOLIBSDEV} ${libdir}/lib*${SOLIBSDEV}"
     FILES_${PN}-dev = "${includedir} ${FILES_SOLIBSDEV} ${libdir}/*.la \
                     ${libdir}/*.o ${libdir}/pkgconfig ${datadir}/pkgconfig \
                     ${datadir}/aclocal ${base_libdir}/*.o \
                     ${libdir}/${BPN}/*.la ${base_libdir}/*.la"
     SECTION_${PN}-dev = "devel"
     ALLOW_EMPTY_${PN}-dev = "1"
     RDEPENDS_${PN}-dev = "${PN} (= ${EXTENDPKGV})"

     FILES_${PN}-staticdev = "${libdir}/*.a ${base_libdir}/*.a ${libdir}/${BPN}/*.a"
     SECTION_${PN}-staticdev = "devel"
     RDEPENDS_${PN}-staticdev = "${PN}-dev (= ${EXTENDPKGV})"
                

The build system offers the ability to build libraries with different target optimizations or architecture formats and combine these together into one system image. You can link different binaries in the image against the different libraries as needed for specific use cases. This feature is called "Multilib."

An example would be where you have most of a system compiled in 32-bit mode using 32-bit libraries, but you have something large, like a database engine, that needs to be a 64-bit application and uses 64-bit libraries. Multilib allows you to get the best of both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries.

While the Multilib feature is most commonly used for 32 and 64-bit differences, the approach the build system uses facilitates different target optimizations. You could compile some binaries to use one set of libraries and other binaries to use a different set of libraries. The libraries could differ in architecture, compiler options, or other optimizations.

Several examples exist in the meta-skeleton layer found in the Source Directory:

     MACHINE = "qemux86-64"
     require conf/multilib.conf
     MULTILIBS = "multilib:lib32"
     DEFAULTTUNE_virtclass-multilib-lib32 = "x86"
     IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " lib32-glib-2.0"
                    

     $ bitbake core-image-sato
                    

     $ bitbake lib32-glib-2.0
                    

Situations can exist where you need to install and use multiple versions of the same library on the same system at the same time. These situations almost always exist when a library API changes and you have multiple pieces of software that depend on the separate versions of the library. To accommodate these situations, you can install multiple versions of the same library in parallel on the same system.

The process is straightforward as long as the libraries use proper versioning. With properly versioned libraries, all you need to do to individually specify the libraries is create separate, appropriately named recipes where the PN part of the name includes a portion that differentiates each library version (e.g.the major part of the version number). Thus, instead of having a single recipe that loads one version of a library (e.g. clutter), you provide multiple recipes that result in different versions of the libraries you want. As an example, the following two recipes would allow the two separate versions of the clutter library to co-exist on the same system:

     clutter-1.6_1.6.20.bb
     clutter-1.8_1.8.4.bb
                

Additionally, if you have other recipes that depend on a given library, you need to use the DEPENDS variable to create the dependency. Continuing with the same example, if you want to have a recipe depend on the 1.8 version of the clutter library, use the following in your recipe:

     DEPENDS = "clutter-1.8"
                

Enabling the generation of introspection data (GIR files) in your library package involves the following:

You might find that you do not want to generate introspection data. Or, perhaps QEMU does not work on your build host and target architecture combination. If so, you can use either of the following methods to disable GIR file generations:

If you disable introspection data, you can still obtain it through other means such as copying the data from a suitable sysroot, or by generating it on the target hardware. The OpenEmbedded build system does not currently provide specific support for these techniques.

Use the following procedure to test if generating introspection data is working in an image:

The following know issues exist for GObject Introspection Support:

This section provides some background on the Wic utility. While none of this information is required to use Wic, you might find it interesting.

In order to use the Wic utility with the OpenEmbedded Build system, your system needs to meet the following requirements:

You can get general help for the wic command by entering the wic command by itself or by entering the command with a help argument as follows:

     $ wic -h
     $ wic --help
     $ wic help
                

Currently, Wic supports seven commands: cp, create, help, list, ls, rm, and write. You can get help for all these commands except "help" by using the following form:

     $ wic help command
                

For example, the following command returns help for the write command:

     $ wic help write
                

Wic supports help for three topics: overview, plugins, and kickstart. You can get help for any topic using the following form:

     $ wic help topic
                

For example, the following returns overview help for Wic:

     $ wic help overview
                

One additional level of help exists for Wic. You can get help on individual images through the list command. You can use the list command to return the available Wic images as follows:

     $ wic list images
       mpc8315e-rdb                  		Create SD card image for MPC8315E-RDB
       genericx86                    		Create an EFI disk image for genericx86*
       beaglebone-yocto              		Create SD card image for Beaglebone
       edgerouter                    		Create SD card image for Edgerouter
       qemux86-directdisk            		Create a qemu machine 'pcbios' direct disk image
       directdisk-gpt                		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image
       mkefidisk                     		Create an EFI disk image
       directdisk                    		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image
       systemd-bootdisk              		Create an EFI disk image with systemd-boot
       mkhybridiso                   		Create a hybrid ISO image
       sdimage-bootpart              		Create SD card image with a boot partition
       directdisk-multi-rootfs       		Create multi rootfs image using rootfs plugin
       directdisk-bootloader-config  		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image with custom bootloader config
                

Once you know the list of available Wic images, you can use help with the command to get help on a particular image. For example, the following command returns help on the "beaglebone-yocto" image:

     $ wic list beaglebone-yocto help


     Creates a partitioned SD card image for Beaglebone.
     Boot files are located in the first vfat partition.
                

You can use Wic in two different modes, depending on how much control you need for specifying the Openembedded build artifacts that are used for creating the image: Raw and Cooked:

Regardless of the mode you use, you need to have the build artifacts ready and available.

     $ wic create wks_file options ...

       Where:

          wks_file:
             An OpenEmbedded kickstart file.  You can provide
             your own custom file or use a file from a set of
             existing files as described by further options.

          optional arguments:
            -h, --help            show this help message and exit
            -o OUTDIR, --outdir OUTDIR
                                  name of directory to create image in
            -e IMAGE_NAME, --image-name IMAGE_NAME
                                  name of the image to use the artifacts from e.g. core-
                                  image-sato
            -r ROOTFS_DIR, --rootfs-dir ROOTFS_DIR
                                  path to the /rootfs dir to use as the .wks rootfs
                                  source
            -b BOOTIMG_DIR, --bootimg-dir BOOTIMG_DIR
                                  path to the dir containing the boot artifacts (e.g.
                                  /EFI or /syslinux dirs) to use as the .wks bootimg
                                  source
            -k KERNEL_DIR, --kernel-dir KERNEL_DIR
                                  path to the dir containing the kernel to use in the
                                  .wks bootimg
            -n NATIVE_SYSROOT, --native-sysroot NATIVE_SYSROOT
                                  path to the native sysroot containing the tools to use
                                  to build the image
            -s, --skip-build-check
                                  skip the build check
            -f, --build-rootfs    build rootfs
            -c {gzip,bzip2,xz}, --compress-with {gzip,bzip2,xz}
                                  compress image with specified compressor
            -m, --bmap            generate .bmap
            --no-fstab-update     Do not change fstab file.
            -v VARS_DIR, --vars VARS_DIR
                                  directory with <image>.env files that store bitbake
                                  variables
            -D, --debug           output debug information
                    

     $ wic create wks_file -e IMAGE_NAME

       Where:

          wks_file:
             An OpenEmbedded kickstart file.  You can provide
             your own custom file or use a file from a set of
             existing files provided with the Yocto Project
             release.

          required argument:
             -e IMAGE_NAME, --image-name IMAGE_NAME
                                  name of the image to use the artifacts from e.g. core-
                                  image-sato
                    

If you do not want to create your own kickstart file, you can use an existing file provided by the Wic installation. As shipped, kickstart files can be found in the Yocto Project Source Repositories in the following two locations:

     poky/meta-yocto-bsp/wic
     poky/scripts/lib/wic/canned-wks
                

Use the following command to list the available kickstart files:

     $ wic list images
       mpc8315e-rdb                  		Create SD card image for MPC8315E-RDB
       genericx86                    		Create an EFI disk image for genericx86*
       beaglebone-yocto              		Create SD card image for Beaglebone
       edgerouter                    		Create SD card image for Edgerouter
       qemux86-directdisk            		Create a qemu machine 'pcbios' direct disk image
       directdisk-gpt                		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image
       mkefidisk                     		Create an EFI disk image
       directdisk                    		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image
       systemd-bootdisk              		Create an EFI disk image with systemd-boot
       mkhybridiso                   		Create a hybrid ISO image
       sdimage-bootpart              		Create SD card image with a boot partition
       directdisk-multi-rootfs       		Create multi rootfs image using rootfs plugin
       directdisk-bootloader-config  		Create a 'pcbios' direct disk image with custom bootloader config
                

When you use an existing file, you do not have to use the .wks extension. Here is an example in Raw Mode that uses the directdisk file:

     $ wic create directdisk -r rootfs_dir -b bootimg_dir \
           -k kernel_dir -n native_sysroot
                

Here are the actual partition language commands used in the genericx86.wks file to generate an image:

     # short-description: Create an EFI disk image for genericx86*
     # long-description: Creates a partitioned EFI disk image for genericx86* machines
     part /boot --source bootimg-efi --sourceparams="loader=grub-efi" --ondisk sda --label msdos --active --align 1024
     part / --source rootfs --ondisk sda --fstype=ext4 --label platform --align 1024 --use-uuid
     part swap --ondisk sda --size 44 --label swap1 --fstype=swap

     bootloader --ptable gpt --timeout=5 --append="rootfstype=ext4 console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0"
                

You can extend and specialize Wic functionality by using Wic plug-ins. This section explains the Wic plug-in interface.

Source plug-ins provide a mechanism to customize partition content during the Wic image generation process. You can use source plug-ins to map values that you specify using --source commands in kickstart files (i.e. *.wks) to a plug-in implementation used to populate a given partition.

Source plug-ins are subclasses defined in plug-in files. As shipped, the Yocto Project provides several plug-in files. You can see the source plug-in files that ship with the Yocto Project here. Each of these plug-in files contains source plug-ins that are designed to populate a specific Wic image partition.

Source plug-ins are subclasses of the SourcePlugin class, which is defined in the poky/scripts/lib/wic/pluginbase.py file. For example, the BootimgEFIPlugin source plug-in found in the bootimg-efi.py file is a subclass of the SourcePlugin class, which is found in the pluginbase.py file.

You can also implement source plug-ins in a layer outside of the Source Repositories (external layer). To do so, be sure that your plug-in files are located in a directory whose path is scripts/lib/wic/plugins/source/ within your external layer. When the plug-in files are located there, the source plug-ins they contain are made available to Wic.

When the Wic implementation needs to invoke a partition-specific implementation, it looks for the plug-in with the same name as the --source parameter used in the kickstart file given to that partition. For example, if the partition is set up using the following command in a kickstart file:

     part /boot --source bootimg-pcbios --ondisk sda --label boot --active --align 1024
                

The methods defined as class members of the matching source plug-in (i.e. bootimg-pcbios) in the bootimg-pcbios.py plug-in file are used.

To be more concrete, here is the corresponding plug-in definition from the bootimg-pcbios.py file for the previous command along with an example method called by the Wic implementation when it needs to prepare a partition using an implementation-specific function:

                  .
                  .
                  .
     class BootimgPcbiosPlugin(SourcePlugin):
         """
         Create MBR boot partition and install syslinux on it.
         """

         name = 'bootimg-pcbios'
                  .
                  .
                  .
         @classmethod
         def do_prepare_partition(cls, part, source_params, creator, cr_workdir,
                                  oe_builddir, bootimg_dir, kernel_dir,
                                  rootfs_dir, native_sysroot):
             """
             Called to do the actual content population for a partition i.e. it
             'prepares' the partition to be incorporated into the image.
             In this case, prepare content for legacy bios boot partition.
             """
                  .
                  .
                  .
                

If a subclass (plug-in) itself does not implement a particular function, Wic locates and uses the default version in the superclass. It is for this reason that all source plug-ins are derived from the SourcePlugin class.

The SourcePlugin class defined in the pluginbase.py file defines a set of methods that source plug-ins can implement or override. Any plug-ins (subclass of SourcePlugin) that do not implement a particular method inherit the implementation of the method from the SourcePlugin class. For more information, see the SourcePlugin class in the pluginbase.py file for details:

The following list describes the methods implemented in the SourcePlugin class:

You can extend the source plug-in mechanism. To add more hooks, create more source plug-in methods within SourcePlugin and the corresponding derived subclasses. The code that calls the plug-in methods uses the plugin.get_source_plugin_methods() function to find the method or methods needed by the call. Retrieval of those methods is accomplished by filling up a dict with keys that contain the method names of interest. On success, these will be filled in with the actual methods. See the Wic implementation for examples and details.

This section provides several examples that show how to use the Wic utility. All the examples assume the list of requirements in the "Requirements" section have been met. The examples assume the previously generated image is core-image-minimal.

     $ wic create mkefidisk -e core-image-minimal
     INFO: Building wic-tools...
               .
               .
               .
     INFO: The new image(s) can be found here:
       ./mkefidisk-201804191017-sda.direct

     The following build artifacts were used to create the image(s):
       ROOTFS_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/rootfs
       BOOTIMG_DIR:                  /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot/usr/share
       KERNEL_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/deploy/images/qemux86
       NATIVE_SYSROOT:               /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/i586-oe-linux/wic-tools/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot-native

     INFO: The image(s) were created using OE kickstart file:
       /home/stephano/build/master/openembedded-core/scripts/lib/wic/canned-wks/mkefidisk.wks
                    

     $ oe-run-native bmaptool copy mkefidisk-201804191017-sda.direct /dev/sdX
                    

     $ sudo dd if=mkefidisk-201804191017-sda.direct of=/dev/sdX
                    

     $ cp /home/stephano/poky/scripts/lib/wic/canned-wks/directdisk-gpt.wks \
          /home/stephano/poky/scripts/lib/wic/canned-wks/directdisksdb-gpt.wks
                    

     part /boot --source bootimg-pcbios --ondisk sdb --label boot --active --align 1024
     part / --source rootfs --ondisk sdb --fstype=ext4 --label platform --align 1024 --use-uuid
                    

     $ wic create directdisksdb-gpt -e core-image-minimal
     INFO: Building wic-tools...
                .
                .
                .
     Initialising tasks: 100% |#######################################| Time: 0:00:01
     NOTE: Executing SetScene Tasks
     NOTE: Executing RunQueue Tasks
     NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 1161 tasks of which 1157 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.
     INFO: Creating image(s)...

     INFO: The new image(s) can be found here:
       ./directdisksdb-gpt-201710090938-sdb.direct

     The following build artifacts were used to create the image(s):
       ROOTFS_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/rootfs
       BOOTIMG_DIR:                  /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot/usr/share
       KERNEL_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/deploy/images/qemux86
       NATIVE_SYSROOT:               /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/i586-oe-linux/wic-tools/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot-native

     INFO: The image(s) were created using OE kickstart file:
       /home/stephano/poky/scripts/lib/wic/canned-wks/directdisksdb-gpt.wks
                    

     $ sudo dd if=directdisksdb-gpt-201710090938-sdb.direct of=/dev/sdb
     140966+0 records in
     140966+0 records out
     72174592 bytes (72 MB, 69 MiB) copied, 78.0282 s, 925 kB/s
     $ sudo eject /dev/sdb
                    

     $ wic create /home/stephano/my_yocto/test.wks -o /home/stephano/testwic \
          --rootfs-dir /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp/work/qemux86-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/rootfs \
          --bootimg-dir /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp/work/qemux86-poky-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot/usr/share \
          --kernel-dir /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp/deploy/images/qemux86 \
          --native-sysroot /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp/work/i586-poky-linux/wic-tools/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot-native

     INFO: Creating image(s)...

     INFO: The new image(s) can be found here:
       /home/stephano/testwic/test-201710091445-sdb.direct

     The following build artifacts were used to create the image(s):
       ROOTFS_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/rootfs
       BOOTIMG_DIR:                  /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/qemux86-oe-linux/core-image-minimal/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot/usr/share
       KERNEL_DIR:                   /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/deploy/images/qemux86
       NATIVE_SYSROOT:               /home/stephano/build/master/build/tmp-glibc/work/i586-oe-linux/wic-tools/1.0-r0/recipe-sysroot-native

     INFO: The image(s) were created using OE kickstart file:
       /home/stephano/my_yocto/test.wks
                    

General considerations exist that help you create more secure images. You should consider the following suggestions to help make your device more secure:

The Yocto Project has security flags that you can enable that help make your build output more secure. The security flags are in the meta/conf/distro/include/security_flags.inc file in your Source Directory (e.g. poky).

Use the following line in your local.conf file or in your custom distribution configuration file to enable the security compiler and linker flags for your build:

     require conf/distro/include/security_flags.inc
                

You can take some steps that are specific to the OpenEmbedded build system to make your images more secure:

The Yocto Project provides tools for making your image more secure. You can find these tools in the meta-security layer of the Yocto Project Source Repositories.

You might find it necessary to prevent specific packages from being installed into an image. If so, you can use several variables to direct the build system to essentially ignore installing recommended packages or to not install a package at all.

The following list introduces variables you can use to prevent packages from being installed into your image. Each of these variables only works with IPK and RPM package types. Support for Debian packages does not exist. Also, you can use these variables from your local.conf file or attach them to a specific image recipe by using a recipe name override. For more detail on the variables, see the descriptions in the Yocto Project Reference Manual's glossary chapter.

This section provides some background on how binary package versioning is accomplished and presents some of the services, variables, and terminology involved.

In order to understand binary package versioning, you need to consider the following:

Whenever the binary package content changes, the binary package version must change. Changing the binary package version is accomplished by changing or "bumping" the PR and/or PV values. Increasing these values occurs one of two ways:

Given a primary challenge of any build system and its users is how to maintain a package feed that is compatible with existing package manager applications such as RPM, APT, and OPKG, using an automated system is much preferred over a manual system. In either system, the main requirement is that binary package version numbering increases in a linear fashion and that a number of version components exist that support that linear progression. For information on how to ensure package revisioning remains linear, see the "Automatically Incrementing a Binary Package Revision Number" section.

The following three sections provide related information on the PR Service, the manual method for "bumping" PR and/or PV, and on how to ensure binary package revisioning remains linear.

     PRSERV_HOST = "localhost:0"
                    

     bitbake-prserv --host ip --port port --start
                    

     # It is recommended to activate "buildhistory" for testing the PR service
     INHERIT += "buildhistory"
     BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1"
                    

     SRCREV = "${AUTOREV}"
                    

     PV = "1.0+git${SRCPV}"
                    

     AUTOINC+source_code_revision
                    

Many pieces of software split functionality into optional modules (or plug-ins) and the plug-ins that are built might depend on configuration options. To avoid having to duplicate the logic that determines what modules are available in your recipe or to avoid having to package each module by hand, the OpenEmbedded build system provides functionality to handle module packaging dynamically.

To handle optional module packaging, you need to do two things:

     python populate_packages_prepend () {
         lighttpd_libdir = d.expand('${libdir}')
         do_split_packages(d, lighttpd_libdir, '^mod_(.*)\.so$',
                          'lighttpd-module-%s', 'Lighttpd module for %s',
                           extra_depends='')
     }
                    

     Mandatory arguments

     root
        The path in which to search
     file_regex
        Regular expression to match searched files.
        Use parentheses () to mark the part of this
        expression that should be used to derive the
        module name (to be substituted where %s is
        used in other function arguments as noted below)
     output_pattern
        Pattern to use for the package names. Must
        include %s.
     description
        Description to set for each package. Must
        include %s.

     Optional arguments

     postinst
        Postinstall script to use for all packages
        (as a string)
     recursive
        True to perform a recursive search - default
        False
     hook
        A hook function to be called for every match.
        The function will be called with the following
        arguments (in the order listed):

        f
           Full path to the file/directory match
        pkg
           The package name
        file_regex
           As above
        output_pattern
           As above
        modulename
           The module name derived using file_regex

     extra_depends
        Extra runtime dependencies (RDEPENDS) to be
        set for all packages. The default value of None
        causes a dependency on the main package
        (${PN}) - if you do not want this, pass empty
        string '' for this parameter.
     aux_files_pattern
        Extra item(s) to be added to FILES for each
        package. Can be a single string item or a list
        of strings for multiple items. Must include %s.
     postrm
        postrm script to use for all packages (as a
        string)
     allow_dirs
        True to allow directories to be matched -
        default False
     prepend
        If True, prepend created packages to PACKAGES
        instead of the default False which appends them
     match_path
        match file_regex on the whole relative path to
        the root rather than just the file name
     aux_files_pattern_verbatim
        Extra item(s) to be added to FILES for each
        package, using the actual derived module name
        rather than converting it to something legal
        for a package name. Can be a single string item
        or a list of strings for multiple items. Must
        include %s.
     allow_links
        True to allow symlinks to be matched - default
        False
     summary
        Summary to set for each package. Must include %s;
        defaults to description if not set.
                     

     PACKAGES_DYNAMIC = "lighttpd-module-.*"
                    

During a build, BitBake always transforms a recipe into one or more packages. For example, BitBake takes the bash recipe and produces a number of packages (e.g. bash, bash-bashbug, bash-completion, bash-completion-dbg, bash-completion-dev, bash-completion-extra, bash-dbg, and so forth). Not all generated packages are included in an image.

In several situations, you might need to update, add, remove, or query the packages on a target device at runtime (i.e. without having to generate a new image). Examples of such situations include:

In all these situations, you have something similar to a more traditional Linux distribution in that in-field devices are able to receive pre-compiled packages from a server for installation or update. Being able to install these packages on a running, in-field device is what is termed "runtime package management".

In order to use runtime package management, you need a host or server machine that serves up the pre-compiled packages plus the required metadata. You also need package manipulation tools on the target. The build machine is a likely candidate to act as the server. However, that machine does not necessarily have to be the package server. The build machine could push its artifacts to another machine that acts as the server (e.g. Internet-facing). In fact, doing so is advantageous for a production environment as getting the packages away from the development system's build directory prevents accidental overwrites.

A simple build that targets just one device produces more than one package database. In other words, the packages produced by a build are separated out into a couple of different package groupings based on criteria such as the target's CPU architecture, the target board, or the C library used on the target. For example, a build targeting the qemux86 device produces the following three package databases: noarch, i586, and qemux86. If you wanted your qemux86 device to be aware of all the packages that were available to it, you would need to point it to each of these databases individually. In a similar way, a traditional Linux distribution usually is configured to be aware of a number of software repositories from which it retrieves packages.

Using runtime package management is completely optional and not required for a successful build or deployment in any way. But if you want to make use of runtime package management, you need to do a couple things above and beyond the basics. The remainder of this section describes what you need to do.

    $ bitbake package-index
                    

    $ bitbake some-package package-index
                    

     $ cd ~/poky/build/tmp/deploy/rpm
     $ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
                    

     # dnf makecache
                        

     src/gz all http://my.server/ipk/all
     src/gz i586 http://my.server/ipk/i586
     src/gz qemux86 http://my.server/ipk/qemux86
                        

     # opkg update
                        

     deb http://my.server/deb/all ./
     deb http://my.server/deb/i586 ./
     deb http://my.server/deb/qemux86 ./
                        

     # apt-get update
                        

In order to add security to RPM packages used during a build, you can take steps to securely sign them. Once a signature is verified, the OpenEmbedded build system can use the package in the build. If security fails for a signed package, the build system aborts the build.

This section describes how to sign RPM packages during a build and how to use signed package feeds (repositories) when doing a build.

     # Inherit sign_rpm.bbclass to enable signing functionality
     INHERIT += " sign_rpm"
     # Define the GPG key that will be used for signing.
     RPM_GPG_NAME = "key_name"
     # Provide passphrase for the key
     RPM_GPG_PASSPHRASE = "passphrase"
                    

     INHERIT += "sign_package_feed"
     PACKAGE_FEED_GPG_NAME = "key_name"
     PACKAGE_FEED_GPG_PASSPHRASE_FILE = "path_to_file_containing_passphrase"
                    

A Package Test (ptest) runs tests against packages built by the OpenEmbedded build system on the target machine. A ptest contains at least two items: the actual test, and a shell script (run-ptest) that starts the test. The shell script that starts the test must not contain the actual test - the script only starts the test. On the other hand, the test can be anything from a simple shell script that runs a binary and checks the output to an elaborate system of test binaries and data files.

The test generates output in the format used by Automake:

     result: testname
                

where the result can be PASS, FAIL, or SKIP, and the testname can be any identifying string.

For a list of Yocto Project recipes that are already enabled with ptest, see the Ptest wiki page.

     DISTRO_FEATURES_append = " ptest"
     EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "ptest-pkgs"
                    

A good deal that goes into a Yocto Project build is simply downloading all of the source tarballs. Maybe you have been working with another build system (OpenEmbedded or Angstrom) for which you have built up a sizable directory of source tarballs. Or, perhaps someone else has such a directory for which you have read access. If so, you can save time by adding statements to your configuration file so that the build process checks local directories first for existing tarballs before checking the Internet.

Here is an efficient way to set it up in your local.conf file:

     SOURCE_MIRROR_URL ?= "file:///home/you/your-download-dir/"
     INHERIT += "own-mirrors"
     BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS = "1"
     # BB_NO_NETWORK = "1"
                

In the previous example, the BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS variable causes the OpenEmbedded build system to generate tarballs of the Git repositories and store them in the DL_DIR directory. Due to performance reasons, generating and storing these tarballs is not the build system's default behavior.

You can also use the PREMIRRORS variable. For an example, see the variable's glossary entry in the Yocto Project Reference Manual.

Another technique you can use to ready yourself for a successive string of build operations, is to pre-fetch all the source files without actually starting a build. This technique lets you work through any download issues and ultimately gathers all the source files into your download directory build/downloads, which is located with DL_DIR.

Use the following BitBake command form to fetch all the necessary sources without starting the build:

     $ bitbake -c target runall="fetch"
                

This variation of the BitBake command guarantees that you have all the sources for that BitBake target should you disconnect from the Internet and want to do the build later offline.

Set the these variables in your distribution configuration file as follows:

     DISTRO_FEATURES_append = " systemd"
     VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_init_manager = "systemd"
                

You can also prevent the SysVinit distribution feature from being automatically enabled as follows:

     DISTRO_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED = "sysvinit"
                

Doing so removes any redundant SysVinit scripts.

To remove initscripts from your image altogether, set this variable also:

     VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_initscripts = ""
                

For information on the backfill variable, see DISTRO_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED.

Set these variables in your distribution configuration file as follows:

     DISTRO_FEATURES_append = " systemd"
     VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_init_manager = "systemd"
                

Doing so causes your main image to use the packagegroup-core-boot.bb recipe and systemd. The rescue/minimal image cannot use this package group. However, it can install SysVinit and the appropriate packages will have support for both systemd and SysVinit.

To use the static method for device population, you need to set the USE_DEVFS variable to "0" as follows:

     USE_DEVFS = "0"
                

The content of the resulting /dev directory is defined in a Device Table file. The IMAGE_DEVICE_TABLES variable defines the Device Table to use and should be set in the machine or distro configuration file. Alternatively, you can set this variable in your local.conf configuration file.

If you do not define the IMAGE_DEVICE_TABLES variable, the default device_table-minimal.txt is used:

     IMAGE_DEVICE_TABLES = "device_table-mymachine.txt"
                

The population is handled by the makedevs utility during image creation:

To use the dynamic method for device population, you need to use (or be sure to set) the USE_DEVFS variable to "1", which is the default:

     USE_DEVFS = "1"
                

With this setting, the resulting /dev directory is populated by the kernel using devtmpfs. Make sure the corresponding kernel configuration variable CONFIG_DEVTMPFS is set when building you build a Linux kernel.

All devices created by devtmpfs will be owned by root and have permissions 0600.

To have more control over the device nodes, you can use a device manager like udev or busybox-mdev. You choose the device manager by defining the VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager variable in your machine or distro configuration file. Alternatively, you can set this variable in your local.conf configuration file:

     VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager = "udev"

     # Some alternative values
     # VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager = "busybox-mdev"
     # VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_dev_manager = "systemd"
                

To create the read-only root filesystem, simply add the "read-only-rootfs" feature to your image. Using either of the following statements in your image recipe or from within the local.conf file found in the Build Directory causes the build system to create a read-only root filesystem:

     IMAGE_FEATURES = "read-only-rootfs"
                

or

     EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "read-only-rootfs"
                

For more information on how to use these variables, see the "Customizing Images Using Custom IMAGE_FEATURES and EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES" section. For information on the variables, see IMAGE_FEATURES and EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES.

It is very important that you make sure all post-Installation (pkg_postinst) scripts for packages that are installed into the image can be run at the time when the root filesystem is created during the build on the host system. These scripts cannot attempt to run during first-boot on the target device. With the "read-only-rootfs" feature enabled, the build system checks during root filesystem creation to make sure all post-installation scripts succeed. If any of these scripts still need to be run after the root filesystem is created, the build immediately fails. These build-time checks ensure that the build fails rather than the target device fails later during its initial boot operation.

Most of the common post-installation scripts generated by the build system for the out-of-the-box Yocto Project are engineered so that they can run during root filesystem creation (e.g. post-installation scripts for caching fonts). However, if you create and add custom scripts, you need to be sure they can be run during this file system creation.

Here are some common problems that prevent post-installation scripts from running during root filesystem creation:

With the "read-only-rootfs" feature enabled, any attempt by the target to write to the root filesystem at runtime fails. Consequently, you must make sure that you configure processes and applications that attempt these types of writes do so to directories with write access (e.g. /tmp or /var/run).

Build history is disabled by default. To enable it, add the following INHERIT statement and set the BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT variable to "1" at the end of your conf/local.conf file found in the Build Directory:

     INHERIT += "buildhistory"
     BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1"
                

Enabling build history as previously described causes the OpenEmbedded build system to collect build output information and commit it as a single commit to a local Git repository.

You can disable build history by removing the previous statements from your conf/local.conf file.