PREFERRED_PROVIDER and PREFERRED_VERSION in Yocto

-
When we run "bitbake <target>", bitbake looks at the PROVIDES variable of each recipe to find out the recipe for the particular target. The Default value of PROVIDES is PN.

PN --> Name of the Recipe
PV --> Version of the Recipe
PR --> Revision of the Recipe

PREFERRED_PROVIDER: Sometimes a target can have multiple providers. PREFERRED_PROVIDER determines which recipe should be given preference when multiple recipes provide the same item.

E.g. virtual/kernel, u-boot will be provided by multiple recipes
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel = "linux-imx"
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_u-boot = "uboot-imx"

This should be written in local.conf or machine.conf

PREFERRED_VERSION: When multiple versions of  a recipe are available, this variable determines which recipe should be given preference. If we don't state the version, bitbake will pick up the highest version.

E.g. PREFERRED_VERSION_linux-imx = "3.10.17-1.0.0"
PREFERRED_VERSION_u-boot-imx = "2013-04"



In the above screenshot, "linux-yocto" is selected as the provider for kernel.
You can also see there are multiple linux-yocto recipes. With PREFERRED_VERSION, version is set to 4.18%. The % matches any number of characters, useful when version numbers is long. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

bb.utils.contains yocto

-
Image
bb.utils.contains  is most commonly used function in Yocto. grep in poky directory returned with 696 count. $ grep -nr 'bb.utils.contains' poky/ | wc -l 696 It's definition is present in 'poky/bitbake/lib/bb/utils.py' file This function returns third argument if the second argument is subset of the first argument else returns fourth argument Let's take an example to understand this. You can see from the above screenshot, when the second argument is a subset of first argument, "present" was returned, else "notpresent" was returned We can also use bb.utils.contains inside if loop. This we can use inside a recipe. if ${@bb.utils.contains('SOMEFLAG','NEWVALUE3','true','false',d)}; then     FOO = 'HELLO' fi
Read more

Difference between RDEPENDS and DEPENDS in Yocto

-
We normally observe these two (RDEPENDS and DEPENDS) whenever we open any recipe. What should we choose when we write our own recipe. DEPENDS -> Build Time Dependency RDEPENDS -> Run Time Dependency DEPENDS: When a recipe 'A' is DEPENDS on recipe 'B'. In this case, Bitbake first builds recipe 'B' and then recipe 'A' E.g. You need 'dbus' to be built before 'wpa_supplicant'. RDEPENDS: When a recipe 'A' is RDEPENDS on recipe 'B'. In this case, Bitbake deploys 'B' on the target system when it deploys 'A'.  E.g. 'perf' RDEPENDS on 'bash' In other words, DEPENDS are those set of packages that should be available while building package, whereas RDEPENDS are set of packages that should be available during execution of the program.
Read more

make config vs oldconfig vs defconfig vs menuconfig vs savedefconfig

-
Image
Building the Linux Kernel is a two-step process: Configuring the Kernel options Building the Kernel with those options. There are many methods available for configuring the kernel. make config: Text-based Configuration.  Options are prompted one after another. All options need to be answered Access to former options is not possible make menuconfig: Menu-driven user interface Allows to navigate forwards and backward directly between features Allows to load and save files with filenames different from ".config" Provides search feature It uses ncurses library for GUI. If the ncurses library is not installed, make menuconfig option fails. To install ncurses library on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev make defconfig: Creates a ".config" file with default options from the ARCH supplied defconfig Configurations are generally stored in the directory: arch/$(ARCH)/configs $ ls arch/x86/configs/ i386_defconfi
Read more