Distro vs. Image

Distro vs. Image

[Leo Schwab]

Up to this point, all our builds for our prototypes have been "image"
builds, i.e. we built an image recipe starting with
packagegroup-core-boot, and it's accreted from there.  We write the
resulting .sdcard image file to an SD card and boot from that.

Now we would like to create an "installer" image, i.e. a bootable
image whose job is to install a release(-candidate) image to the HW.
Naturally, some config details in the resulting image will be
different.  The more I read, it feels like this wants to be a
"distro," rather than just another image recipe.  Recipes searching
for files will automagically generate subdirectory search paths based
on current distro name, which would allow us to substitute different
config files based on what's being built.  (Extra Credit for this
build would be to incorporate a copy of the release image into the
installer image.)

Trouble is, none of the docs I've read describe very clearly how to
make the leap from cobbling image recipes together to creating a
functionally equivalent distro recipe.  Could someone point out some
resources and examples on how this is meant to be conceptualized and
used?  Thanks in advance for all suggestions.

Schwab

Re: Distro vs. Image

[ChenQi]

Hi Schwab,

What do you mean by "distro recipe"?

I can see your initial problem is that you want different config details 
for the same image recipe (maybe for different HW, I guess?).

Now we would like to create an "installer" image, i.e. a bootable
image whose job is to install a release(-candidate) image to the HW.
Naturally, some config details in the resulting image will be
different.

Can this be done via bbappend file in different layers?
Can this be done via different distro config files?

Regards,
Chen Qi


On 12/23/2014 11:09 AM, Leo Schwab wrote:
> Up to this point, all our builds for our prototypes have been "image"
> builds, i.e. we built an image recipe starting with
> packagegroup-core-boot, and it's accreted from there.  We write the
> resulting .sdcard image file to an SD card and boot from that.
>
> Now we would like to create an "installer" image, i.e. a bootable
> image whose job is to install a release(-candidate) image to the HW.
> Naturally, some config details in the resulting image will be
> different.  The more I read, it feels like this wants to be a
> "distro," rather than just another image recipe.  Recipes searching
> for files will automagically generate subdirectory search paths based
> on current distro name, which would allow us to substitute different
> config files based on what's being built.  (Extra Credit for this
> build would be to incorporate a copy of the release image into the
> installer image.)
>
> Trouble is, none of the docs I've read describe very clearly how to
> make the leap from cobbling image recipes together to creating a
> functionally equivalent distro recipe.  Could someone point out some
> resources and examples on how this is meant to be conceptualized and
> used?  Thanks in advance for all suggestions.
>
> Schwab

Re: Distro vs. Image

[nick]

Schwab,
You asked about an building an installable image, if you have Hob there is a way.
https://www.yoctoproject.org/documentation/hob-manual-16#run-deploy
This is a link to the page explaining it, scroll down to the section on deploying
or running  your image and it should explain how to do it. 
Cheers Nick

On 2014-12-28 09:23 PM, ChenQi wrote:
> Hi Schwab,
> 
> What do you mean by "distro recipe"?
> 
> I can see your initial problem is that you want different config details for the same image recipe (maybe for different HW, I guess?).
> 
> Now we would like to create an "installer" image, i.e. a bootable
> image whose job is to install a release(-candidate) image to the HW.
> Naturally, some config details in the resulting image will be
> different.
> 
> Can this be done via bbappend file in different layers?
> Can this be done via different distro config files?
> 
> Regards,
> Chen Qi
> 
> 
> On 12/23/2014 11:09 AM, Leo Schwab wrote:
>> Up to this point, all our builds for our prototypes have been "image"
>> builds, i.e. we built an image recipe starting with
>> packagegroup-core-boot, and it's accreted from there.  We write the
>> resulting .sdcard image file to an SD card and boot from that.
>>
>> Now we would like to create an "installer" image, i.e. a bootable
>> image whose job is to install a release(-candidate) image to the HW.
>> Naturally, some config details in the resulting image will be
>> different.  The more I read, it feels like this wants to be a
>> "distro," rather than just another image recipe.  Recipes searching
>> for files will automagically generate subdirectory search paths based
>> on current distro name, which would allow us to substitute different
>> config files based on what's being built.  (Extra Credit for this
>> build would be to incorporate a copy of the release image into the
>> installer image.)
>>
>> Trouble is, none of the docs I've read describe very clearly how to
>> make the leap from cobbling image recipes together to creating a
>> functionally equivalent distro recipe.  Could someone point out some
>> resources and examples on how this is meant to be conceptualized and
>> used?  Thanks in advance for all suggestions.
>>
>> Schwab
>