3 Recipe Style Guide

3.1 Recipe Naming Conventions

In general, most recipes should follow the naming convention recipes-category/recipename/recipename_version.bb. Recipes for related projects may share the same recipe directory. recipename and category may contain hyphens, but hyphens are not allowed in version.

If the recipe is tracking a Git revision that does not correspond to a released version of the software, version may be git (e.g. recipename_git.bb) and the recipe would set PV.

3.2 Version Policy

Our versions follow the form <epoch>:<version>-<revision> or in BitBake variable terms ${PE}:${PV}-${PR}. We generally follow the Debian version policy which defines these terms.

In most cases the version PV will be set automatically from the recipe file name. It is recommended to use released versions of software as these are revisions that upstream are expecting people to use.

Recipe versions should always compare and sort correctly so that upgrades work as expected. With conventional versions such as 1.4 upgrading to 1.5 this happens naturally, but some versions don’t sort. For example, 1.5 Release Candidate 2 could be written as 1.5rc2 but this sorts after 1.5, so upgrades from feeds won’t happen correctly.

Instead the tilde (~) operator can be used, which sorts before the empty string so 1.5~rc2 comes before 1.5. There is a historical syntax which may be found where PV is set as a combination of the prior version + the pre-release version, for example PV=1.4+1.5rc2. This is a valid syntax but the tilde form is preferred.

For version comparisons, the opkg-compare-versions program from opkg-utils can be useful when attempting to determine how two version numbers compare to each other. Our definitive version comparison algorithm is the one within bitbake which aims to match those of the package managers and Debian policy closely.

When a recipe references a git revision that does not correspond to a released version of software (e.g. is not a tagged version), the PV variable should include the Git revision using the following to make the version clear:

PV = "<version>+git${SRCPV}"

In this case, <version> should be the most recently released version of the software from the current source revision (git describe can be useful for determining this). Whilst not recommended for published layers, this format is also useful when using AUTOREV to set the recipe to increment source control revisions automatically, which can be useful during local development.

3.3 Version Number Changes

The PR variable is used to indicate different revisions of a recipe that reference the same upstream source version. It can be used to force a new version of a recipe to be installed onto a device from a package feed. These once had to be set manually but in most cases these can now be set and incremented automatically by a PR Server connected with a package feed.

When PV increases, any existing PR value can and should be removed.

If PV changes in such a way that it does not increase with respect to the previous value, you need to increase PE to ensure package managers will upgrade it correctly. If unset you should set PE to “1” since the default of empty is easily confused with “0” depending on the package manager. PE can only have an integer value.

3.4 Recipe formatting

3.4.1 Variable Formatting

  • Variable assignment should a space around each side of the operator, e.g. FOO = "bar", not FOO="bar".

  • Double quotes should be used on the right-hand side of the assignment, e.g. FOO = "bar" not FOO = 'bar'

  • Spaces should be used for indenting variables, with 4 spaces per tab

  • Long variables should be split over multiple lines when possible by using the continuation character (\)

  • When splitting a long variable over multiple lines, all continuation lines should be indented (with spaces) to align with the start of the quote on the first line:

    FOO = "this line is \
       long \
       "

    Instead of:

    FOO = "this line is \
long \
"

3.4.2 Python Function formatting

  • Spaces must be used for indenting Python code, with 4 spaces per tab

3.4.3 Shell Function formatting

  • The formatting of shell functions should be consistent within layers. Some use tabs, some use spaces.

3.5 Recipe metadata

3.5.1 Required Variables

The following variables should be included in all recipes:

  • SUMMARY: a one line description of the upstream project

  • DESCRIPTION: an extended description of the upstream project, possibly with multiple lines. If no reasonable description can be written, this may be omitted as it defaults to SUMMARY.

  • HOMEPAGE: the URL to the upstream projects homepage.

  • BUGTRACKER: the URL upstream projects bug tracking website, if applicable.

3.5.2 Recipe Ordering

When a variable is defined in recipes and classes, variables should follow the general order when possible:

There are some cases where ordering is important and these cases would override this default order. Examples include:

  • PACKAGE_ARCH needing to be set before inherit packagegroup

Tasks should be ordered based on the order they generally execute. For commonly used tasks this would be:

Custom tasks should be sorted similarly.

Package specific variables are typically grouped together, e.g.:

RDEPENDS:${PN} = “foo”
RDEPENDS:${PN}-libs = “bar”

RRECOMMENDS:${PN} = “one”
RRECOMMENDS:${PN}-libs = “two”

3.5.3 Recipe License Fields

Recipes need to define both the LICENSE and LIC_FILES_CHKSUM variables:

  • LICENSE: This variable specifies the license for the software. If you do not know the license under which the software you are building is distributed, you should go to the source code and look for that information. Typical files containing this information include COPYING, LICENSE, and README files. You could also find the information near the top of a source file. For example, given a piece of software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2, you would set LICENSE as follows:

    LICENSE = "GPL-2.0-only"

    The licenses you specify within LICENSE can have any name as long as you do not use spaces, since spaces are used as separators between license names. For standard licenses, use the names of the files in meta/files/common-licenses/ or the SPDXLICENSEMAP flag names defined in meta/conf/licenses.conf.

  • LIC_FILES_CHKSUM: The OpenEmbedded build system uses this variable to make sure the license text has not changed. If it has, the build produces an error and it affords you the chance to figure it out and correct the problem.

    You need to specify all applicable licensing files for the software. At the end of the configuration step, the build process will compare the checksums of the files to be sure the text has not changed. Any differences result in an error with the message containing the current checksum. For more explanation and examples of how to set the LIC_FILES_CHKSUM variable, see the “Tracking License Changes” section.

    To determine the correct checksum string, you can list the appropriate files in the LIC_FILES_CHKSUM variable with incorrect md5 strings, attempt to build the software, and then note the resulting error messages that will report the correct md5 strings. See the “Fetching Code” section for additional information.

    Here is an example that assumes the software has a COPYING file:

    LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=xxx"

    When you try to build the software, the build system will produce an error and give you the correct string that you can substitute into the recipe file for a subsequent build.

3.5.3.1 License Updates

When you change the LICENSE or LIC_FILES_CHKSUM in the recipe you need to briefly explain the reason for the change via a License-Update: tag. Often it’s quite trivial, such as:

License-Update: copyright years refreshed

Less often, the actual licensing terms themselves will have changed. If so, do try to link to upstream making/justifying that decision.

3.5.4 Tips and Guidelines for Writing Recipes

  • Use BBCLASSEXTEND instead of creating separate recipes such as -native and -nativesdk ones, whenever possible. This avoids having to maintain multiple recipe files at the same time.

  • Recipes should have tasks which are idempotent, i.e. that executing a given task multiple times shouldn’t change the end result. The build environment is built upon this assumption and breaking it can cause obscure build failures.

  • For idempotence when modifying files in tasks, it is usually best to:

    • copy a file X to X.orig (only if it doesn’t exist already)

    • then, copy X.orig back to X,

    • and, finally, modify X.

    This ensures if rerun the task always has the same end result and the original file can be preserved to reuse. It also guards against an interrupted build corrupting the file.

3.6 Patch Upstream Status

In order to keep track of patches applied by recipes and ultimately reduce the number of patches that need maintaining, the OpenEmbedded build system requires information about the upstream status of each patch.

In its description, each patch should provide detailed information about the bug that it addresses, such as the URL in a bug tracking system and links to relevant mailing list archives.

Then, you should also add an Upstream-Status: tag containing one of the following status strings:

Pending

No determination has been made yet, or patch has not yet been submitted to upstream.

Keep in mind that every patch submitted upstream reduces the maintainance burden in OpenEmbedded and Yocto Project in the long run, so this patch status should only be used in exceptional cases if there are genuine obstacles to submitting a patch upstream; the reason for that should be included in the patch.

Submitted [where]

Submitted to upstream, waiting for approval. Optionally include where it was submitted, such as the author, mailing list, etc.

Backport [version]

Accepted upstream and included in the next release, or backported from newer upstream version, because we are at a fixed version. Include upstream version info (e.g. commit ID or next expected version).

Denied

Not accepted by upstream, include reason in patch.

Inactive-Upstream [lastcommit: when (and/or) lastrelease: when]

The upstream is no longer available. This typically means a defunct project where no activity has happened for a long time — measured in years. To make that judgement, it is recommended to look at not only when the last release happened, but also when the last commit happened, and whether newly made bug reports and merge requests since that time receive no reaction. It is also recommended to add to the patch description any relevant links where the inactivity can be clearly seen.

Inappropriate [reason]

The patch is not appropriate for upstream, include a brief reason on the same line enclosed with []. In the past, there were several different reasons not to submit patches upstream, but we have to consider that every non-upstreamed patch means a maintainance burden for recipe maintainers. Currently, the only reasons to mark patches as inappropriate for upstream submission are:

  • oe specific: the issue is specific to how OpenEmbedded performs builds or sets things up at runtime, and can be resolved only with a patch that is not however relevant or appropriate for general upstream submission.

  • upstream ticket <link>: the issue is not specific to Open-Embedded and should be fixed upstream, but the patch in its current form is not suitable for merging upstream, and the author lacks sufficient expertise to develop a proper patch. Instead the issue is handled via a bug report (include link).

Of course, if another person later takes care of submitting this patch upstream, the status should be changed to Submitted [where], and an additional Signed-off-by: line should be added to the patch by the person claiming responsibility for upstreaming.

3.6.1 Examples

Here’s an example of a patch that has been submitted upstream:

rpm: Adjusted the foo setting in bar

[RPM Ticket #65] -- http://rpm5.org/cvs/tktview?tn=65,5

The foo setting in bar was decreased from X to X-50% in order to
ensure we don't exhaust all system memory with foobar threads.

Upstream-Status: Submitted [rpm5-devel@rpm5.org]

Signed-off-by: Joe Developer <joe.developer@example.com>

A future update can change the value to Backport or Denied as appropriate.

Another example of a patch that is specific to OpenEmbedded:

Do not treat warnings as errors

There are additional warnings found with musl which are
treated as errors and fails the build, we have more combinations
than upstream supports to handle.

Upstream-Status: Inappropriate [oe specific]

Here’s a patch that has been backported from an upstream commit:

include missing sys/file.h for LOCK_EX

Upstream-Status: Backport [https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/ac8db36cbc26694ee94beecc8dca208ec4b5fd45]

3.7 CVE patches

In order to have a better control of vulnerabilities, patches that fix CVEs must contain a CVE: tag. This tag list all CVEs fixed by the patch. If more than one CVE is fixed, separate them using spaces.

3.7.1 CVE Examples

This should be the header of patch that fixes CVE-2015-8370 in GRUB2:

grub2: Fix CVE-2015-8370

[No upstream tracking] -- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1286966

Back to 28; Grub2 Authentication

Two functions suffer from integer underflow fault; the grub_username_get() and grub_password_get()located in
grub-core/normal/auth.c and lib/crypto.c respectively. This can be exploited to obtain a Grub rescue shell.

Upstream-Status: Backport [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/commit/?id=451d80e52d851432e109771bb8febafca7a5f1f2]
CVE: CVE-2015-8370
Signed-off-by: Joe Developer <joe.developer@example.com>

3.8 Patch format

By default, patches created with git format-patch have a Git version signature at the end. To avoid having a Git signature at the end of generated or updated patches, you can use Git configuration settings:

git config --global format.signature ""

Note

Patches generated or updated by devtool are created with no signature.