dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

[Robert P. J. Day]

  from here:

http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/dev-manual/dev-manual.html#usingpoky-extend-customimage-custombb

a couple gripes.

  end of 4.2.1 suggests

  IMAGE_INSTALL += "strace"

when creating a new image .bb file.  as i read it, the docs currently
suggest

  IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " strace"

when adding to your local.conf, and i don't think it's sufficiently
clear to the reader the distinction between "+=" and "_append", and
when to use one or the other.  and reading the source doesn't help
since it bounces back and forth constantly.  is this clarified
anywhere?

  a bigger gripe for me is this:

One way to get additional software into an image is to create a
custom image. The following example shows the form for the two lines
you need:

     IMAGE_INSTALL = "task-core-x11-base package1 package2"

     inherit core-image

no.  that is not a way to get "additional" software into an image, it
is a way to *override* core-image.bbclass's conditional setting of:

  IMAGE_INSTALL ?= "${CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL}"

which i think is overly confusing.  in general, i'm really unhappy
with the number of image definitions that explicitly set
IMAGE_INSTALL, *then* inherit core-image.  the potential to mislead
the reader as to what's happening is really overwhelming.

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

Re: dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

[Tomas Frydrych]

Hi,

On 22/08/12 21:37, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> One way to get additional software into an image is to create a
> custom image. 

The manual should make it clear that this is *the* canonical way to add
software to your images. Modifications to local.conf are temporary
tweaks for testing/debugging (i.e., you should never feel the need to
commit your local.conf to some project version control system).

Tomas

Re: dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

[Scott Garman]

On 08/23/2012 01:13 AM, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 22/08/12 21:37, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> One way to get additional software into an image is to create a
>> custom image.
>
> The manual should make it clear that this is *the* canonical way to add
> software to your images. Modifications to local.conf are temporary
> tweaks for testing/debugging (i.e., you should never feel the need to
> commit your local.conf to some project version control system).
>
> Tomas

+1. If you add additional packages to core-image-minimal in your 
local.conf, you're no longer really building core-image-minimal.

Scott

-- 
Scott Garman
Embedded Linux Engineer - Yocto Project
Intel Open Source Technology Center

Re: dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Scott Garman wrote:

> On 08/23/2012 01:13 AM, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 22/08/12 21:37, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > > One way to get additional software into an image is to create a
> > > custom image.
> >
> > The manual should make it clear that this is *the* canonical way to add
> > software to your images. Modifications to local.conf are temporary
> > tweaks for testing/debugging (i.e., you should never feel the need to
> > commit your local.conf to some project version control system).
> >
> > Tomas
>
> +1. If you add additional packages to core-image-minimal in your local.conf,
> you're no longer really building core-image-minimal.

  sure.  but if you similarly explicitly set IMAGE_INSTALL before
inheriting core-image, you're not really "inheriting" core-image
either. :-)

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

Re: dev manual section on "customizing images" needs serious adjustment

[Tomas Frydrych]

On 24/08/12 16:45, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Scott Garman wrote:
> 
>> On 08/23/2012 01:13 AM, Tomas Frydrych wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> On 22/08/12 21:37, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>>>> One way to get additional software into an image is to create a
>>>> custom image.
>>>
>>> The manual should make it clear that this is *the* canonical way to add
>>> software to your images. Modifications to local.conf are temporary
>>> tweaks for testing/debugging (i.e., you should never feel the need to
>>> commit your local.conf to some project version control system).
>>>
>>> Tomas
>>
>> +1. If you add additional packages to core-image-minimal in your local.conf,
>> you're no longer really building core-image-minimal.
> 
>   sure.  but if you similarly explicitly set IMAGE_INSTALL before
> inheriting core-image, you're not really "inheriting" core-image
> either. :-)

That is quite a different thing: core-image-minimal is a recipe to build
an image with defined contents, in contrast core-image is a class, and
the whole point of classes is that recipes can inherit and override them.

Tomas