Re: images installing other images and artifacts

[Stefano Babic <sbabic@denx.de>]

Hi Andrea,

On 07/01/2016 16:30, Andrea Galbusera wrote:
> Hi!
> I'm building an image for a production system, let's call it
> 'production-image'. All required artifacts (kernel, dtbs, bootloader
> and the image itself) are built by the process as expected and
> available in tmp/deploy/images. The production machine is configured
> to boot from flash.
> 
> As a production tool, I use a variation of the final target, the main
> difference being it boots from SD card. The image it boots (i.e.
> 'flasher-image'), runs a tool for flashing SOMs (the hardware is
> modular) with the production artifacts.
> 
> It would be nice to have a package installed in flasher-image that
> provides all the artifacts required by the flasher tool in order to
> flash production-image together with other binaries it needs. Having
> such a package available through a package feed would simplify future
> upgrades of artifacts on potentially many (and distributed) such
> flashing stations. Being that package, say
> 'production-image-mymachine-artifacts' the same or not as the one
> providing the flashing tool should not be the real issue here.
> 
> I've being reasoning and doing some trial mostly following a couple
> approaches. At first I've considered building the package as a sort of
> 'side-effect' of building production-image itself but it seems like an
> awkward idea since image recipes are not designed to build packages. I
> then crafted a separate recipe, which depends on 'production-image'
> and that I can use to package artifacts. Before trying to refine this
> last approach, currently very rough (it uses hardcoded names for all
> the artifacts) but somewhat promising, I stopped by to ask for some
> community wisdom.
> 
> Does anyone know of any custom layer doing something similar to what
> I'm looking for? Do you even think this is something
> reasonable/feasible with the current tooling? I don't know of any
> other part of the build system, other than the wic utility, that's
> designed to use artifacts as inputs for further processing.
> 
> In the hope I've been clear enough in explaining my needs. TIA for any
> clue or suggestions.

I am not sure I have really understood what you are planning to do.
Anyway, I had a similar issue becuase I need to build a compound image
(not as package) for the target that contains all components to be
installed on the target (kernel, dtb, rootfs, ..). You can take a look
at meta-swupdate and at the swupdate.bbclass. It could be a starting
point for you.

I hope this helps,
Stefano Babic


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