Re: [Openembedded-architecture] proposal: build pipelines in bitbake-setup

[Trevor Gamblin <tgamblin@baylibre.com>]

On 2026-05-05 06:17, Alexander Kanavin via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> Hello,
>
> bitbake-setup currently doesn't support describing build pipelines: a
> sequence of commands that actually produce something useful. For a
> true end-to-end solution this gap should be filled.
>
> Here's my proposal, which probably has obvious shortcomings, that I
> would like to hear about :)

Hi,

Thanks for submitting this proposal. I will try to summarize some of my 
thoughts from the public call and otherwise in-line.

>
> 0. Design goals:
>
> - something suitable for most situations, including newcomers running
> a local build, and CI doing a nightly job
> - avoid custom scripts in most situations
> - self-documented; everything must be described
> - extensible; if there's something missing that no one thought about,
> it can be added later in a way that supplements existing features
> without replacing them.
>
> 1. Specification in a build configuration would look like this:
>
> "build-targets": {
>      "steps" : [
>          { "name": "build-apple", "description": "Build an apple for
> the purpose of making apple pie", "command": "bitbake apple-image"},
>          { "name": "build-orange", "description": "Build an orange for
> the purpose of making orange juice", "command": "bitbake
> orange-image"},
>          { "name": "test-apple", "description": "Test an apple using
> testimage class", "command": "bitbake -c testimage apple-image"},
>          { "name": "test-orange", "description": "Test an orange using
> testimage class", "command": "bitbake -c testimage orange-image"},
>          { "name": "qemu-console", "description": "Start the last built
> image in qemu with console UI", "command": "runqemu kvm snapshot
> nographic"},
>          { "name": "publish", "description":"Copy build artefacts to a
> public download server", "command":
> "path/to/publish-image-executable"}
>      ],
>      "pipelines": [
>          {"name": "publish-apple", "description": "Build, test, and
> publish apple (requires publishing rights on the download server)",
> "steps": ["build-apple", "test-apple", "publish"]},
>          {"name": "publish-orange", "description": "Build, test, and
> publish orange  (requires publishing rights on the download server)",
> "steps": ["build-orange", "test-orange", "publish"]},
>          {"name": "qemu-apple", "description": "Build and start apple
> in qemu with console UI", "steps": ["build-apple", "qemu-console"]},
>          {"name": "qemu-orange", "description": "Build and start orange
> in qemu with console UI", "steps": ["build-orange", "qemu-console"]}
>      ]
> }
>
> Configurations would include a list of possible pipelines:
>          "configurations": [
>          {
>              "name": "fruitgarden",
>              "description": "Alex's fruit garden",
>              "bb-layers": ["meta-fruit"],
>              "oe-fragments": [ "distro/fruit-garden", "machine/earth" ],
>              "pipelines": ["qemu-apple", "qemu-orange",
> "publish-apple", "publish-orange"]
>          }
I think it's worth considering for the nightly-job-in-CI case whether 
people will want to use bitbake-setup to cover that entire scope (i.e., 
build-test-publish). There are a lot of existing CI systems out there 
(Buildbot, Tekton, GitHub/Gitea/Forgejo Actions, GitLab CI, etc.) where 
you already define pipelines as a series of stages/steps, and each one 
is generally intended to cover either a single command or a handful of 
closely-associated ones. I am not sure that users would want to invoke a 
bitbake-setup pipeline as a single step in these systems, as that would 
potentially obfuscate failures and configuration issues just by having 
too many things happening per step. However, I can see it being useful 
to people who want a fire-and-forget reproducer for typical build/test 
configurations.

As a side note, it feels like stepping outside of the "build setup" 
space and including things like runtime testing, artifact publishing, 
etc. feels like a clash with bitbake-setup's name.
>
> 2. Nomenclature:
>
> - "step" is a single command that is also given a short name and a
> longer description. Steps are building blocks for pipelines and can't
> be individually executed.
Why not? Why not have the ability to run something like 'bitbake-setup 
run-step <step_name'? That would actually be an advantage this feature 
could provide over many other CI systems, as it's usually difficult or 
impossible to rerun individual steps (you have to re-run a whole job or 
pipeline). I can see this being very useful for example when you need to 
run 'bitbake -c testimage' in a loop many times to try and catch 
intermittent failures.
> - "pipeline" is a sequence of steps, that is also given a short name
> and a longer description. Pipelines can mix and match defined steps as
> they please.
> - each configuration includes a list of possible targets, and once it
> is set up, any of them can be executed (see below for the UI).
>
> 3. User Interface to pipelines
>
> Once there is a setup, there are two ways to execute a pipeline:
>
> a) For each pipeline there is a shell script that can be run directly:
>
> /path/to/bitbake-builds/fruitgarden/qemu-apple
> /path/to/bitbake-builds/fruitgarden/publish-apple
> etc.
>
> qemu-apple script would look something like:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> # Build and start apple in qemu with console UI
> . init-build-env
> # Build an apple for the purpose of making apple pie
> bitbake apple-image
> # Start the last built image in qemu with console UI
> runqemu kvm snapshot nographic
>
> e.g. assembled from pipeline steps and their descriptions.
Similarly here - maybe a 'bitbake-setup run-pipeline <pipeline_name>' 
would be more effective?
>
> b) Interactive UI :'bitbake-setup build'
>
> This would present an interactive UI similar to 'bitbake-setup init', e.g:
> $ bitbake-setup build
> Available build pipelines:
> 1. qemu-apple  Build and start apple in qemu with console UI
> 2. qemu-orange Build and start orange in qemu with console UI
> ... etc
> Please choose one of the above: 1
>
> The following commands will be executed:
> # Build an apple for the purpose of making apple pie
> bitbake apple-image
> # Start the last built image in qemu with console UI
> runqemu kvm snapshot nographic
>
> Proceed? [y/N]
> etc.
>
> 4. Implementation
>
> This should actually be fairly straightforward. There's no need to add
> new features to bitbake (e.g. 'standard target definitions' in layers
> was considered at some point, but after more consideration I think it
> can be postponed or perhaps altogether avoided), or modify oe-core.
My other main concern about this is around maintenance - depending on 
how it is ultimately implemented, it could end up looking like a 
miniature CI/CD system for Yocto builds - that is certainly how I find 
myself seeing it, and I've written my responses in that mindset. I can 
see the utility in having the feature available more generally to reduce 
time spent reproducing a common build/test case, but I wonder if it'd 
get used often enough under its currently proposed form.

Trevor
>
> Alex
>
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