FAQ-Build

Please bookmark http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/dev-manual/dev-manual.html this is the latest Manual which decribes various Yocto/OE terms in quite a bit of detail .

Metadata represents the versions of the various components in a distribution, such as the particular versions of the Linux kernel or libraries. The project supplies an example set of metadata that can generate several example distributions. The actual metadata used for the construction of a custom distribution may be supplied by a commercial vendor or created by an embedded developer. The root filesystem is defined in the metadata for a given build of a distribution.

There are tools within BitBake that enable this level of details.

“bitbake -g targetname” creates depends.dot and task-depends.dot files in the current directory. These files show which packages and tasks depend on which other packages and tasks and are useful for debugging purposes.

"bitbake -g -u depexp targetname" shows results in a more human-readable, GUI style. A simple mount of the resulting root image will show how much storage space is being used.

In addition, the toaster is a new graphical user interface for BitBake that makes these tools much easier to use.

As with any complex system, the real answer is it depends, but of course that is not very helpful. The simplest method for adding a single package to your build is to add a line like this to conf/local.conf:

IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " package"

Use your own package name in place of package. Note the leading space before the package name. If you want to add multiple packages, you can use multiple lines like the above, or list all packages on a single line with:

IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " package1 package2 package3"