4.13 Moving to the Yocto Project 2.5 Release

This section provides migration information for moving to the Yocto Project 2.5 Release from the prior release.

4.13.1 Packaging Changes

This section provides information about packaging changes that have occurred:

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

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

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

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

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

4.13.2 Removed Recipes

The following recipes have been removed:

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

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

  • hostap-utils: This software package is obsolete.

  • latencytop: This recipe is no longer maintained upstream.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

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

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

  • man: This recipe has been replaced by modern man-db

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

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

  • neon: This software package is no longer maintained upstream and is no longer needed by anything in OpenEmbedded-Core.

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

  • pax: This software package is obsolete.

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

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

4.13.3 Scripts and Tools Changes

The following are changes to scripts and tools:

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

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

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

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

4.13.4 BitBake Changes

The following are BitBake changes:

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

    • Behavior A: For a given target (or set of targets) look through the task graph and run task X only if it is present and will be built.

    • Behavior B: For a given target (or set of targets) look through the task graph and run task X if any recipe in the taskgraph has such a target, even if it is not in the original task graph.

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

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

    bitbake <target> -c fetchall

    should now be replaced with:

    bitbake <target> --runall=fetch

4.13.5 Python and Python 3 Changes

The following are auto-packaging changes to Python and Python 3:

The script-managed python-*-manifest.inc files that were previously used to generate Python and Python 3 packages have been replaced with a JSON-based file that is easier to read and maintain. A new task is available for maintainers of the Python recipes to update the JSON file when upgrading to new Python versions. You can now edit the file directly instead of having to edit a script and run it to update the file.

One particular change to note is that the Python recipes no longer have build-time provides for their packages. This assumes python-foo is one of the packages provided by the Python recipe. You can no longer run bitbake python-foo or have a DEPENDS on python-foo, but doing either of the following causes the package to work as expected:

IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " python-foo"

or

RDEPENDS_${PN} = "python-foo"

The earlier build-time provides behavior was a quirk of the way the Python manifest file was created. For more information on this change please see this commit.

4.13.6 Miscellaneous Changes

The following are additional changes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Removed

    Replacement

    base_path_join()

    oe.path.join()

    base_path_relative()

    oe.path.relative()

    base_path_out()

    oe.path.format_display()

    base_read_file()

    oe.utils.read_file()

    base_ifelse()

    oe.utils.ifelse()

    base_conditional()

    oe.utils.conditional()

    base_less_or_equal()

    oe.utils.less_or_equal()

    base_version_less_or_equal()

    oe.utils.version_less_or_equal()

    base_contains()

    bb.utils.contains()

    base_both_contain()

    oe.utils.both_contain()

    base_prune_suffix()

    oe.utils.prune_suffix()

    oe_filter()

    oe.utils.str_filter()

    oe_filter_out()

    oe.utils.str_filter_out() (or use the _remove operator)

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

    For more information, see the “Post-Installation Scripts” section in the Yocto Project Development Tasks Manual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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