Yocto: Build custom bootloaders outside aarch64-poky-linux work directory - yocto

I have a project that is mostly complete for a custom third party SoM which requires custom bootstrap/bootloaders, currently the recipe is in a meta-bsp layer which works alright however they are built in the aarch64-poky-linux build directory. We have multiple SoM models from this manufacturer that each require different bootloader configs and I'd like them to be built in a machine specific non-linux directory if possible like aarch64-<machine>-none or something. Is this possible?
We are using dunfell release.
Recipes are in meta-mfg/recipes-bsp/mfg-/mfg-_version.bb
Fairly standard recipe setup including:
SECTION = "bootloaders"
SRC_URI..
DEPENDS (native packages only)
do_configure()
do_compile()
do_install()
Current build directory: tmp/work/aarch64-poky-linux/mfg-bootloader/1.x.x-rx/
Preferred build directory: tmp/work/aarch64-<machine>-none/mfg-bootloader/1.x.x-rx/
When building for different machines/soms it uses the same directory and uses the previous build which may be incorrect. We do have a workaround where we don't stamp the configure/build/install tasks so they always rebuild however we'd like a cleaner more appropriate implementation.
Is there any way to accomplish this?
I haven't been able to find any information so far.

I have been pointed to the solution from the IRC channel for anyone with the same question:
Add PACKAGE_ARCH = "${MACHINE_ARCH}" to the recipe to build in machine specific folders.

Related

In BitBake (Yocto), how to find what layer is using a dependency?

While building a Yocto image, BitBake fetches the files specified in layer recipes. When running bitbake, the process identifies missing files and tries to find them from mirrors.
Aside from searching the whole project for the missing file, is there a bitbake tool to identify a layer or recipe, given a broken package/file link?
One current example is:
expat-native-2.2.8-r0
tried, invalid: https://downloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.2.8.tar.bz2
use: https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/releases/download/R_2_2_8/expat-2.2.8.tar.bz2
This question may be similar, but is out of date.
How do I find which layer is using the expat-native package?

How to add a missing library (or executable or other file) to Yocto/bitbake

For an application I am running, there is a run time error as it cannot find libwayland-client.so.0 shared object. How do I know which package provides it and where do I add it. I tried as shown below but it gave me a Nothing PROVIDES error.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL += "libwayland-client"
You don't typically work with single files when building Yocto images
In reverse order
You install packages to the image
You build packages by using a recipe
You find (or as a last resort write) recipes as part of layers.
Generally when something is missing you take the following steps:
Check the layerindex https://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/branch/master/recipes/?q=wayland It tells you that there is a recipe called wayland in layer openembedded-core
Add the layer in question. openembedded-core is already contained in Yocto's poky (directly under the name meta, just to confuse the newcomer...), so nothing to add in this example
Create the environment listing of the recipe in question, bitbake -e wayland >wayland.env
Check what packages the recipe in question creates grep ^PACKAGES= wayland.env. In this case it is easy because there is really only one package wayland (-debug, -dev etc. are special purpose that would not contain the library)
Add a package to the image by its package name. How to do that exactly depends on the image type you create. The variable name given in the question works for some images, but not all. Search for IMAGE_INSTALL in the manual https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.6.1/mega-manual/mega-manual.html for other options.
Once you have built the recipe in question you can also check what files are contained in a package (In this case recipe name and package name are identical, but that is not always the case. Some recipes build more than one package suitable for installation, so obviously they need to use different names)
$ oe-pkgdata-util list-pkg-files wayland
wayland:
/usr/lib/libwayland-client.so.0
/usr/lib/libwayland-client.so.0.3.0
/usr/lib/libwayland-cursor.so.0
/usr/lib/libwayland-cursor.so.0.0.0
/usr/lib/libwayland-server.so.0
/usr/lib/libwayland-server.so.0.1.0

In yocto (poky) why is the layers config in the build/ folder?

I'm new to yocto. I'm trying to learn how the packages are added, how to create new layers and so on... just poking around. Started by cloning poky and playing around.
To my understanding, the bblayers.conf file is critical to the project configuration and what you end up building (what layers and packages go into your final image).
This might be the wrong assumption, but I also have a feeling that the build/ folder is where things you build (bitbake) stay. Images, lots of things needed to build them, a big cache of stuff... You can delete it and rebuild it if you somehow broke it. Or you can just copy everything without the build/ folder and continue working on a different computer.
Apparently it's not quite the case. The build/conf/ folder has the important .conf files like the bblayers.conf.
Can someone explain why is this the case? Is there an elegant way to separate the project config and the build folder?
There are a couple layers to the Yocto Project, mainly:
-BSPDIR: TOPDIR (build),sources,setup-environment
-BSPDIR/setup-environment: initial all the variable to for bitbake;
-BSPDIR/sources: meta-data/
-TOPDIR: conf/ sstate-cache/ cache/ tmp/ downloads/
-TOPDIR/downloads: recipe fetched packages;
-TOPDIR/conf/ : stored all the configuration. Mainly bblayers.conf, local.conf, sanity_info;
-TOPDIR/conf/bblayers.conf: stored all the path to meta-data that will be loaded;
-TOPDIR/conf/local.conf: configuration to build
-TOPDIR/conf/sanity_info: path double check to make sure that all the path used in the last compile match the current compile;
-TOPDIR/tmp/: Where all the compiling and building work happen
In BSPDIR/sources/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf
sources/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf:TMPDIR ?= "${TOPDIR}/tmp"
sources/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf:PERSISTENT_DIR = "${TOPDIR}/cache"
sources/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf:DL_DIR ?= "${TOPDIR}/downloads"
sources/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf:SSTATE_DIR ?= "${TOPDIR}/sstate-cache"
TOPDIR is where you initialize when run setup-environment or oe-init-build-env; All the other bitbake configuration environment variable can be changed based on your need in conf/local.conf;
e.g. modify conf/local.conf to change the downloads directory from TOPDIR/downloads;
DL_DIR ?= "/home/downloads/"
To create new layer, please watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HsaoVqX7dg
You might have followed the Yocto Project Quick Start Guide.
The earliest step in yocto after installing (cloning git repositories and installing packages) is to create your OE (OpenEmbedded) environment, which is done via:
source oe-init-build-env
This automatically creates and leads you to the build folder.
Matter that you can give any directory of your system as parameter for this call (Reference Manual - Build Overview):
source oe-init-build-env [build_dir]
⤑ This is also the step, where your 'project config' is separated from the actual build folder.
⤑ As you assumed, in practice you would at most copy the layers and not the build folder. Even better is to leave sources from others in their git repositories and only copy and maintain your own layers.
it is true an issue in the modern Yocto build system.
file bblayers.conf has to be synthesized based on MACHINE and DISTRO information using all provided (usually with the help of repo manifest file) layers by: collecting data from each available layer file layer.conf as well as conf/machine, conf/distro, images.
Instead bblayers.conf is usually copied over from the base layer conf/bblayers.conf location with the help of setup-environment script.
this approach provides no "one click" buildable environment but require maintainer/developer to look into readme to identify what layers are missing to be added to the build/conf/bblayers.conf.

How to add packages to populate SDK as a host tool?

I have created my own recipe for building my SW, which requires native perl during building (e.g. invoking perl script for generating code). There is no problem if I add my recipe to an image and use bitbake to build my recipe with the image.
Now I also want to build SW with a populate SDK, but I found that when I generate the populate SDK, the native perl only contains a few modules without what is necessary to build my SW. I have found two ways to generate the populate SDK with additional perl modules:
Add TOOLCHAIN_HOST_TASK += "nativesdk-perl-modules" to my image .bb file before I generate the populate SDK
Add a bbappend file for nativesdk-packagegroup-sdk-host which includes "nativesdk-perl-modules" in RDEPENDS
For 1, it is an image-specific solution.
For 2, it is a global solution.
Now I am looking for a recipe-specific solution. Is there a solution where I could add some configuration in my recipe .bb file, and then I build populate SDK for any image which include my recipe will contains these additional native perl modules?
I'm afraid there isn't really a way for a specific recipe to hint at adding specific dependencies to an SDK. The closest thing I can think of would be to code something into anonymous python in something like an extra global class, where it checks the included target packages and then adds dependencies to TOOLCHAIN_HOST_TASK if the right target packages are being installed. Even this wouldn't detect non direct dependencies of your specific recipe.

How to setup a DotNetNuke Development Environment with Source Control?

My team is developing a new DotNetNuke web application and would like to know what is recommended to setup a development environment with source control and automated builds? We would like to keep the DNN source code separate from our custom modules and extensions source code.
The DotNetNuke Compiled Module template for Visual Studio wants us to store the source code in the DesktopModules directory of the DNN source code and output to the DNN source code bin directory. Is this the recommended structure? I would rather keep the files in different locations, but then it becomes more difficult to run and debug locally as it would require an install of the module for each change. Also, how should an automated build deploy any changes?
How have others set this up? Is there a recommended best practice?
For my source control, I develop modules in their own project. This contains the module code, test code, data provider code (if applicable) and anything else. This is checked into source control like any other project. Note that the module project contains no links to a specific DNN website, and DNN references are made in the project to a common "bin" directory that references your target build. For example, in my projects folder, I have \bin460 , \bin480, \bin510, \bin520 etc. Each of these folders holds a set of binaries for a specific DNN version. That way you can build against a particular version but test against any version you like.
The problem with source-controlling a module in place in a dnn install is
- sometimes not all of the module code is easily isolated under a single parent directory
- doesn't lend well to a PA module approach
- not easy to shift the project to a different DNN Version for development or testing
- easy to inadvertently source control parts of the DNN solution, particularly with integrated VS source control solutions.
This approach compiles quickly because you're not trying to compile the entire project. For test deployment I have a build script that copies the various parts of the module into a target website. This can be done via the compile (link the build script) or just run after you've had a successful compile in a cmd window. My build script has a 'target' environment switch, so that I can say 'dnn520' to deploy the build to my test dnn520 install. Note that you need to manually create the module configuration first before this will work, but this is a one-time effort, and you can use the export feature to create your .dnn module manifest.
To build your module package, invest the time in a comprehensive script which will take the various parts from your source directory, and zip them into an install package. Keep all of the parts in your source control folder, and copy them into a temp directory, then run a command-line zip utility (I use an ancient version of pkzip) to pack it into an installable file.
The benefits of this approach is :
- separation of module code from installed code
- simple way of keeping only the module code in source control (don't have to exclude all the website code)
- ability to quickly test out modules in different dnn versions
- packaging script allows you to quickly and easily build a new version of a module for install testing/deployment
The drawbacks are
- can't use the magic green 'go' button in VS (have to manually attach debugger)
- more setup time than developing in-place
We typically stick to keeping the module code in a folder under DesktopModules and building to the website's bin directory.
In source control, we just map the individual modules, rather than the entire website. Depending on what we're working on, a module may be an entire project in source control, or we may have multiple related modules in the same project, living next to each other.
Automatically deploying changes is somewhat difficult in DNN. It's highly recommended to have a build script that packages your module into an installable form. You can then copy installable packages into the website's Install/Module folder, and get the URL /Install/Install.aspx?mode=InstallResources, which will install any packages in that folder.
In response to bduke's answer. You should, and don't want to build projects in the DesktopModules folder.
That's where all of the source code for the site out of the box goes.
That's where you modules will be "installed" and thus if someone "updates" or re-installs one, then it will be overwritten
It can make upgrading your Application far more difficult. Many developers don't understand that the idea of not touching the original source code files to modify their behavior. BECAUSE it will just be overwritten when you perform an upgrade.
If you want to build modules, create a solution folder called Modules and place your seperate project modules there.
If you want to debug them, make the target debug output point to the web\bin folder.
If you want to install/deploy them. Build it in release mode and install them through the Module/Extension filter.