Weekly Status

Yocto Project Weekly Status September 19th, 2023

Current Dev Position: YP 4.3 M4 (Feature Freeze)
Next Deadline: 2nd October 2023 YP 4.3 M4 build date

Next Team Meetings:

• Bug Triage meeting Thursday September 21st 7:30 am PDT (https://zoom.us/j/454367603?pwd=ZGxoa2ZXL3FkM3Y0bFd5aVpHVVZ6dz09)
• Weekly Engineering Sync Tuesday September 19th 8 am PDT (https://zoom.us/j/990892712?pwd=cHU1MjhoM2x6ck81bkcrYjRrcmJsUT09)
• Twitch - See https://www.twitch.tv/theyoctojester

Key Status/Updates:

• The M3 rc1 QA report is available but the regression report failed, raising a dilemma on whether to release, the TSC needs to discuss
• YP 3.1.28 is in QA
• The numpy reproducibility issue remains
• The openssh ptest intermittent failure does have better logs available but we’ve yet to decode what it means: http://autobuilder.yocto.io/pub/non-release/20230917-2/testresults/qemuarm64-ptest/openssh.log
• A significant flaw was found in bitbake’s inotify usage which has been causing rare intermittent build failures. These would only affect usage where BB_SERVER_TIMEOUT was enabled or tinfoil was used (e.g. recipetool, devtool, bitbake-layers). The issue means we’ve switched to using stat() calls and mtime to detect changes. External tools using tinfoil which change files will need to add an API call to have bitbake refresh its caches.
• On a positive note, those issues do explain some of the timeout and AB-INT failures that have been puzzling us for some time. Fixing it also allows the flush() call removal in server logging, which should improve bitbake server’s performance during heavy I/O.
• There are patches pending to tweak the layout of deploy/licenses/ and SPDX’s file layout to avoid overlapping files in builds breaking due to “shared” files being removed unexpectedly. We will likely enforce non-overlapping files for symlinks under sstate control going forward to avoid these issues in future.
• We are continuing to see large numbers of version upgrades of recipes, some of which are having destabilizing effects. This may mean we have to reduce the numbers being accepted to stabilize for release.
• We’re happy to be able to announce that some of the work in the RFQ will now be progressing, specifically that:
  • Marta Rybczynska (Syslinbit) will be working on the security topic
  • Alexander Kanvin (Linutronix) will be working on the core workflow topic
  • Savoir-faire Linux will be working on the toaster and VSCode topics
  • BayLibre will be working on the patchtest and project tooling topics
  • Michael Opdenacker (Bootlin) will be working on the binary distro topic
  • Smile will be working on the meta-openembedded topic area

We’d also note that Tim Orling (Konsulko) will be working on the layer index.

Ways to contribute:

• As people are likely aware, the project has a number of components which are either unmaintained, or have people with little to no time trying to keep them alive. These components include: patchtest, layerindex, devtool, toaster, wic, oeqa, autobuilder, CROPs containers, pseudo and more. Many have open bugs. Help is welcome in trying to better look after these components!
• There are bugs identified as possible for newcomers to the project: https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Newcomers
• There are bugs that are currently unassigned for YP 4.2. See: https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Bug_Triage#Medium.2B_4.2_Unassigned_Enhancements.2FBugs
• We’d welcome new maintainers for recipes in OE-Core. Please see the list at: http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/meta/conf/distro/include/maintainers.inc and discuss with the existing maintainer, or ask on the OE-Core mailing list. We will likely move a chunk of these to “Unassigned” soon to help facilitate this.
• Help is very much welcome in trying to resolve our autobuilder intermittent issues. You can see the list of failures we’re continuing to see by searching for the “AB-INT” tag in bugzilla: https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=AB-INT.
• Help us resolve CVE issues: CVE metrics
• We have a growing number of bugs in bugzilla, any help with them is appreciated.

YP 4.3 Milestone Dates:

• YP 4.3 M3 is being reviewed.
• YP 4.3 M4 build date 2023/10/02
• YP 4.3 M4 Release date 2023/10/27

Upcoming dot releases:

• YP 3.1.28 in QA
• YP 4.0.13 build date 2023/09/25
• YP 4.0.13 Release date 2023/10/06
• YP 3.1.29 build date 2023/10/30
• YP 3.1.29 Release date 2023/11/10
• YP 4.0.14 build date 2023/11/06
• YP 4.0.14 Release date 2023/11/17
• YP 4.2.4 build date 2023/11/13
• YP 4.2.4 Release date 2023/11/24
• YP 3.1.30 build date 2023/12/11
• YP 3.1.30 Release date 2023/12/22
• YP 4.0.15 build date 2023/12/18
• YP 4.0.15 Release date 2023/12/29

Tracking Metrics:

• WDD 2505 (last week 2530) (https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/charts/combo.html)
• OE-Core/Poky Patch Metrics
  • Total patches found: 1185 (last week 1186)
  • Patches in the Pending State: 255 (22%) [last week 255 (22%)]
• https://autobuilder.yocto.io/pub/non-release/patchmetrics/

The Yocto Project’s technical governance is through its Technical Steering Committee, more information is available at:
https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/TSC

Archives

• 2023 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive
• 2022 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive
• 2021 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive
• 2020 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive
• 2019 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive
• 2018 Yocto Project Weekly Status Archive