Re: clarification on what packages are *truly* needed for a yocto build?

[Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton@linux.intel.com>]

Hi Robert,

On Wednesday 09 October 2013 06:45:36 Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   (aside: prepping to teach an OE/yocto course in a couple weeks,
> going thru the docs again, so be prepared for questions, some of them
> potentially silly but all in aid of clarifying bits of documentation.
> i'm sure scott rifenbark is currently steeling himself for the
> experience. :-)
> 
>   i'm intimately aware of the current doc pages that list how to
> establish your yocto build environment, such as this:
> 
> https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Poky/GettingStarted/Dependencies

That page is very much unmaintained and out-of-date. We should probably note
as much on the page (or just delete it). The canonical list of build host
dependencies can always be found in the Quick Start guide:

http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/yocto-project-qs/yocto-project-qs.html

(substitute "current" in that URL with "1.5" if you'll be training with the
1.5 release, until the release happens at which point those will be the same
thing).

> but a question or two.
> 
>   in some cases, i've seen, say, subversion listed as a prerequisite,
> even though subversion is clearly built natively. so is it *truly* a
> user-installable prerequisite? or am i misreading something?

No, subversion is not needed on the host. git is however (and specifically for
the 1.5 release onwards, git 1.7.5 or later is required.)

>   also, at this point, is there a list of what one can safely add to
> ASSUME_PROVIDED to cut down build time on a new project? i recall from
> way back when that, if you use ASSUME_PROVIDED, you're sort of voiding
> the warranty in terms of what's been quality checked. but if one is
> willing to take a chance, is there a set of packages that would be
> considered "safe" to assume are provided? (for example, i would assume
> that, in any current distro, git would certainly be safe, no?)

When we say you're on your own setting this, you really are on your own ;)
We do not QA setting this variable differently from the default, and so it's a
bit hard for us to make any guarantees that any particular value that differs
from the default will be "safe". (FWIW, in dylan/1.4 and later, git-native is
already in the default value of ASSUME_PROVIDED).

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre