Hello Martin,

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 04:44:04PM +0200, Martin Hundebøll wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-06-11 at 15:22 +0200, Marcus Folkesson wrote:
> > Hi Ross,
> > 
> > On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 10:37:06AM +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
> > > On 30 May 2024, at 10:53, Marcus Folkesson via
> > > lists.openembedded.org
> > > <marcus.folkesson=gmail.com@lists.openembedded.org> wrote:
> > > > The image-bootfiles class is used to put all files listed in
> > > > IMAGE_BOOT_FILES into the root filesystem.
> > > > 
> > > > IMAGE_BOOT_FILES is used by the bootimg-partition wic plugin to
> > > > put the
> > > > files into a boot partition. 
> > > > Be able to list files as "boot files" in e.g. your .conf or image
> > > > files
> > > > instead of install those in every recipe is a good thing.
> > > > 
> > > > It is not always desired to have a separate boot partition for
> > > > boot
> > > > files. Sometimes it could be good to have them as a part of the
> > > > root
> > > > filesystem.
> > > > 
> > > > For example, if a double copy strategy is used for update the
> > > > system,
> > > > then you probably want to update both the boot files and root
> > > > filesystem
> > > > at the same time as there may be dependencies.
> > > 
> > > In my mind, IMAGE_BOOT_FILES is a workaround for the fact that some
> > > /boot partitions (such as ones generated by wic) are not managed by
> > > bitbake directly.  If you have a setup where you just have a / that
> > > contains /boot isn’t adding eg grub to IMAGE_INSTALL sufficient to
> > > get it in the right place in the rootfs?
> > 
> > I don't know about the workaround, but it would'nt surprise me as it
> > is
> > not handled by bitbake as it is now.
> > 
> > For some packages yes, but not for all. If you, for instance, have an
> > embedded
> > system where you depend on other files that are critical for the boot
> > process, there is no uniform way to specify that for those files.
> > 
> > IMAGE_BOOT_FILES is good as it let you include e.g. ramdisks and such
> > that does not have installation scripts to the boot partition.
> > 
> > The use case that I had was that I was first using a separate boot
> > partition using the bootimg-partition wic plugin. Everything was
> > good.
> > Then I wanted to include those files into the root filesystem instead
> > to
> > be able to do an atomic update on everything, but there is no good
> > way
> > to achive that.
> 
> I'd suggest updating the recipe providing those boot files, so it
> installs them into /boot (maybe in addition to deploying them to
> $DEPLOYDIR).

Yes, that is the option.

> 
> > This image-class make the swap from bootimg-partition to rootfs
> > seamless as it uses the same mechanics for both implementations.
> 
> I have always disliked the concept of recipes pulling files from
> ${DEPLOY_DIR_IMAGE}. That folder is an output folder, and should not be
> used as input for other packages.
> 
> Instead, a proper do_populate_deploy task similar to
> do_populate_sysroot would make it possible to DEPEND += on deployed
> files from other recipes.

I would probably have implemented it differently if we did not already
had the bootimg-partition plugin that works this way.

I think there is a point in having them work in a similar a way.

> 
> But this is probably a discussion for another mail thread. Sorry for
> raising my opinion so late in the process.

No problem, all feedback is good. Thank you

> 
> // Martin


Best regards,
Marcus Folkesson