[meta-ti] building Yocto for Pandaboard

[Denys Dmytriyenko]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 03:33:47PM +0000, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-02-09 at 14:54 +0100, Koen Kooi wrote:
> > Op 9 feb. 2012, om 14:11 heeft jfabernathy het volgende geschreven:
> > > On 02/09/2012 08:01 AM, Maupin, Chase wrote:
> > >> Jim, you are welcome here.  As was mentioned before there have been
> > a lot of discussions about this layer.  One of the goals for the
> > meta-ti layer will be to work with just oe-core and yocto and not
> > require meta-angstrom.  We are moving that direction and the use case
> > you are trying and your experiences with it are important.  Thanks for
> > taking the time to give this a shot.
> > >> 
> > > Thanks, glad the proof of concept falls into the groups thinking as
> > well.  I will monitor for progress on the use of just the Yocto Linux
> > for this POC.
> >
> > Yocto or Poky? Because if you want yocto, angstrom very much *is*
> > yocto. If you want Poky, that's something different.
> 
> I think there are a few things need to get cleared up here as this is
> likely confusing for people.
> 
> The Yocto Project is the overall project which is working on improving
> embedded Linux for people in whatever areas those improvements are
> needed in. This involves things like eglibc, creating standard formats
> for hardware definitions (BSPs) and has also involved some work on build
> system which are derived from OpenEmbedded.
> 
> The Yocto Project uses Poky as its reference build system which is a
> combination of Bitbake, OE-Core, a load of documentation and a very
> small shim called meta-yocto. Its purpose is to provide a known good
> base system people can build on top of by adding layers.
> 
> Angstrom is similar to Poky in that its a mix of components allowing
> people to build things. It includes Bitbake and OE-Core and some other
> pieces. It has an equivalent to meta-yocto with different functionality.
> I'll let Koen as one of its maintainers describe what its purpose is.
> One difference is that is has a specific set of hardware targets and
> provides prebuilt package feeds which Poky does not (nor does the Yocto
> Project).
> 
> meta-ti is intended as a hardware support layer for various TI products.
> 
> The trouble is that some of these components have been around for a
> while and it hasn't always been possible to neatly layer things. In
> particular, meta-ti historically has a dependency on Angstrom.
> 
> Work is underway to remove that dependency so meta-ti can operate freely
> with both Poky and Angstrom, or just with OE-Core and Bitbake as
> separate pieces. There is no architectural problem with this and it is
> the intention of everyone involved. There is the question of sorting
> some of the mechanics and making the change whilst not causing problems
> for existing users. I'm really happy to see progress on this!
> 
> So in answer to Jim's question, you will be able to use meta-ti with
> Poky directly but right now, there are some details being worked through
> and it doesn't quite work. Perhaps we could mention that in the meta-ti
> README so people can see what the plan is as well as the current
> situation?

Richard,

Thank you for such a detailed and constructive message!

I won't repeat what has been already said several times about our plans to 
ensure meta-ti works with other distributions and OE-Core only...

I just wanted to clarify the historical dependency of meta-ti on Angstrom, 
as it's initial focus, driven by Koen and Jason, was mostly on supporting 
existing BeagleBoard platforms and recently released BeagleBone. The lack 
of flexibility is rather unintentional. :)

-- 
Denys