BitBake/UserManual

Introduction

The current BitBake User Manual, as of Dec. 31, 2012 is quite out dated. This page serves a a place to collect ideas for revisions that are required to the bring the User Manual up to date.

Current TOC

The chapter layout of the BitBake User Manual is currently:

1. Introduction
2. Metadata
3. File Download Support
4. The bitbake command

What to Include?

• As pointed out by rday, the patch function is inherent to oe-core, while the fetch function is inherent to bitbake. So can one be discussed without the other?

• Concepts:
  • Explain each step in the bitbake process thoroughly.
  • Provide context to commands. The why, not just the how.

Lessons to Include

• The Bitbaked Hello World
  • Build on the work by Eren Turkey and the original tutorial at the OpenEmbedded wiki.

• Using the Bitbake Env Utility

Random observations by rday

• While BitBake fetcher supports numerous fetching protocols, only half of them are even used so I would simply ignore the unused ones. I made a bunch of notes on fetching here.

• Section 2.2.1 of current BitBake manual opens with discussion of "VAR_<override>_append" construct; that appears to be simply broken and unused. I would ignore it. The other form, "VAR_append_<override>" is, of course, used massively and should be documented.

Deprecated/weird/dead stuff

• All "proto=" should now be replaced with "protocol=" in SRC_URI, although the old form is still allowed but deprecated.
• All "pnum=" should now be replaced with "striplevel=" in SRC_URI for patches.
• Current BitBake manual shows a "this=ignored" parm for patches; total mystery what that means, nothing uses it, Chris Larson has no idea what it's for. Ignore it.