[Buildroot] Extending buildroot functionality for creating board support packages (BSP) out of buildroot tree

[universe II <universeii@gmx.de>]

Is there interest in incorporating this feature into buildroot?
I prepared a patch for it, please see attachment.

Regards,
Andreas



On 04/12/2013 11:51 AM, universe II wrote:
> Dear all,
> we are using buildroot for porting an existing embedded PowerPC board 
> to linux. For this purpose we have to make modifications to the kernel 
> (adding and changing files to support custom hardware). This can 
> easily be done by enabling custom patches in the menuconfig.
> This is a wonderful solution when the development of the kernel 
> modifications is done and the patches are existing but during 
> development this could be time consuming. The reason is that we can 
> not do the kernel modifcations in the kernel tree itself but in a 
> completely separated directory structure. This is caused by our 
> existing version control system and by project development requirements.
>
> Imagine that you made a small modification to one of the custom files  
> (e.g. changing a printk() statement) and you want to re-build the 
> kernel. You have to develop a script which takes a virgin kernel, 
> extracts the gz file, makes a copy of the tree, modifies the files in 
> the copy and then creates the patch and copies this patch to the 
> buildroot tree. Even on a fast hardware this takes some time and you 
> have to do it for every change.
>
> I spent some time this morning to evaluate if there could be a more 
> elegant solution. Here is what I've done:
> 1) In linux/Config.in: Add a new entry to the kernel menuconfig which 
> allows to enter a script name or a directory name (similar to the 
> custom patch option)
> 2) In linux/linux.mk: After unpacking the kernel and applying the 
> patches (if any) the given script or all scripts in the given 
> directory are executed.
>
> This allows me to make modification to the unpacked kernel tree 
> without the need to create patch files but also opens up flexibility 
> for other functionality which may arise in the future.
>
> Let me know what you think about this. If you are interested in 
> incorporating these changes into the official buildroot suite, l can 
> provide the changes I made.
>
> Regards,
> Andreas
>
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