[yocto] Documenting Poky dependencies

[deVries, Alex]

I have a couple of things to say on this topic.

First, swabber is intended to generate a list of packages that were used in build.  So by profiling a build, you should know what packages you used from the host, and what built native/target packages required them.  You may consider using that as input to whatever user-oriented document that is being created. 

Swabber currently generates such a list that can easily be fed into an automated host package checking tool (which we have as part of Wind River Linux).

Swabber lets you create white and black lists, as well as file filters.  This helps you highlight dangerous packages, and not bother listing the obvious requires (eg. glibc).  The lists are per-distribution and generic.

Also, host package dependencies should ultimately be per-package.  For instance, you could require everyone to require all the tools needed to build all of X, but it'd be better that you'd only need to install those packages if you were actually building X.  That would mean adding meta data to the existing recipes that would say what host packages are required.

There are other issues with how to support different distributions.  This can be difficult because of package naming and matching files to packages. I have some ideas on how to do this, but it is still a bit early.

- Alex



On 2010-11-19, at 5:57 PM, Darren Hart wrote:

> On 11/19/2010 04:38 AM, Joshua Lock wrote:
>> On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 12:54 -0800, Stewart, David C wrote:
>>> Thanks for doing this!
>>> 
>>> Some ScottR ARs below.
>>> 
>>>> From: yocto-bounces at yoctoproject.org [mailto:yocto-
>>>> bounces at yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Joshua Lock
>>>> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 4:36 AM
>>>> 
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> I've been thinking about the issue of documenting Poky's dependencies in
>>>> the handbook.
>>>> At the moment the handbook includes a list of required packages and then
>>>> explicitly lists commands to install those packages on Ubuntu.
>>>> 
>>>> What I'd like to propose is that we list the required dependencies in
>>>> the handbook and then link to a wiki page where we can list explicit
>>>> instructions for various distributions.
>>>> 
>>>> This allows us to document the process for as many distributions as
>>>> possible without cluttering the handbook. An alternative would be to add
>>>> this to an appendix but I quite like the idea of people being able to
>>>> edit and add to this information without having to use git.
> 
> That makes sense, although keeping current Ubuntu and Fedora doesn't take much space and saves some large percentage (90%?) of our userbase from having to follow one-more-link to get the required steps.
> 
> I'd also like to see the sanity checker do a better job at listing package names rather than command names in a format that can be copy and pasted into an aptitude or yum install command. If done right, this would basically eliminate the need for any explicit list in the documentation.
> 
> -- 
> Darren Hart
> Yocto Linux Kernel
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