[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Francesco Montorsi]

Hi,
I've been using buildroot since some time and there is a thing I didn't figure 
out yet. Consider this situation: I have a working buildroot environment; I have 
copied into the output/target folder some stuff so that when I run "make" 
buildroot generates for me images into output/images which already contain the 
contents I manually copied.
Now I would like to "reset" the output/target folder, i.e. obtain the buildroot 
"vanilla" output/target tree and to obtian the buildroot vanilla 
output/images.... how can I do that without doing a "make clean" (which requires 
re-compilation of all packages and takes a lot of time)? 

does a "rm -rf output/target && make" works? 


Thanks!
Francesco

[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Thomas Petazzoni]

Dear Francesco Montorsi,

On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:46:00 +0000 (UTC), Francesco Montorsi wrote:

> I've been using buildroot since some time and there is a thing I
> didn't figure out yet. Consider this situation: I have a working
> buildroot environment; I have copied into the output/target folder
> some stuff so that when I run "make" buildroot generates for me
> images into output/images which already contain the contents I
> manually copied. Now I would like to "reset" the output/target
> folder, i.e. obtain the buildroot "vanilla" output/target tree and to
> obtian the buildroot vanilla output/images.... how can I do that
> without doing a "make clean" (which requires re-compilation of all
> packages and takes a lot of time)? 
> 
> does a "rm -rf output/target && make" works? 

No, it doesn't work, and as of today, there isn't really a simple and
reliable way of doing that.

How long is your entire build? What is your configuration (post
your .config if possible)? Do you have an external toolchain? Have you
used ccache? Are you perhaps building inside a virtual machine and/or
on a slow laptop?

Best regards,

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com

[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Francesco Montorsi]

Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@...> writes:
> > does a "rm -rf output/target && make" works? 
> 
> No, it doesn't work, and as of today, there isn't really a simple and
> reliable way of doing that.
ok... I think it would be nice to add one, though!
 
> How long is your entire build? What is your configuration (post
> your .config if possible)? Do you have an external toolchain? Have you
> used ccache? Are you perhaps building inside a virtual machine and/or
> on a slow laptop?
my build is about 1h on an core i5... yes: I'm using ccache.
Anyway, it's not really a matter of compilation flags / development machine. The 
point is that in a development stage I often find myself doing several small 
changes in the configuration files and other stuff (in a SVN environment); then 
I copy them in the output/target tree... my point is that I would like to be 
sure that there are no leftovers from previous cp commands I issued.

Perhaps I can do:
  make   # in buildroot folder
  cp -rf output/target output/targetVANILLA
  cp -rf /mystuff output/target
  make   # to generate images containing my customized stuff in output/images

and then

  rm -rf output/target 
  cp -rf output/targetVANILLA output/target

to start over in the future.

Perhaps skeletons are the most clean way to do that... I will look into it as 
soon as I find the time!

THanks,
Francesco

[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Jérôme Pouiller]

Hello Francesco,

On Monday 25 February 2013 13:46:00 Francesco Montorsi wrote:
> Hi,
> I've been using buildroot since some time and there is a thing I didn't
> figure out yet. Consider this situation: I have a working buildroot
> environment; I have copied into the output/target folder some stuff so that
> when I run "make" buildroot generates for me images into output/images
> which already contain the contents I manually copied.
> Now I would like to "reset" the output/target folder, i.e. obtain the
> buildroot "vanilla" output/target tree and to obtian the buildroot vanilla
> output/images.... how can I do that without doing a "make clean" (which
> requires re-compilation of all packages and takes a lot of time)?
> 
> does a "rm -rf output/target && make" works?
As Thomas said, it does not work. But, some unofficial hacks exist:

  * remove build/.root will force to reinstall skeleton

  * remove build/*/.stamp_target_installed force reinstall each target package

  * depending of you toolchain, you can reinstall libc and co by removing
      # stamps/ext-toolchain-installed (external)
      # stamps/ct-ng-toolchain-installed (ctng)
      # target/lib/libc.so.0 (buildroot)

Remind, there are ton of reasons these tips could do wrong things. The only 
current official way to rebuild target is "make clean".


-- 
J?r?me Pouiller, Sysmic
Embedded Linux specialist
http://www.sysmic.fr

[Buildroot] force buildroot to regenerate the output/target directory tree

[Francesco Montorsi]

J?r?me Pouiller <jezz@...> writes:
> > does a "rm -rf output/target && make" works?
> As Thomas said, it does not work. But, some unofficial hacks exist:
> 
>   * remove build/.root will force to reinstall skeleton
> 
>   * remove build/*/.stamp_target_installed force reinstall each target package
> 
>   * depending of you toolchain, you can reinstall libc and co by removing
>       # stamps/ext-toolchain-installed (external)
>       # stamps/ct-ng-toolchain-installed (ctng)
>       # target/lib/libc.so.0 (buildroot)
> 
> Remind, there are ton of reasons these tips could do wrong things. The only 
> current official way to rebuild target is "make clean".
> 
Thanks!
I will test this approach next time, after doing a backup copy :)

Anyway I think it would be nice to have an additional target in the buildroot 
Makefile which does the operations above (with possible additional quirks) :)

Francesco