Yocto Cooker

Meta buildtool for Yocto Project based Linux embedded systems

The aim of this project is to prepare the needed directories and configuration files before running a Yocto Project build.

The tool is called cooker to follow the culinary metaphor specific to the Yocto Project.

cooker uses a project file called a menu :-).

A menu describes which sources (layers) (git repositories for example) have to be downloaded and which revision has to be checked out.

It also contains custom lines to be written into the local.conf file and which layers have to be included.

With the help of a menu a reproducible build can be achieved. Menu-files are files written in JSON and can thus be stored anywhere.

cooker can also call directly bitbake to run the build.

Maintainers

• Christophe Blaess
• Patrick Boettcher

Installing Yocto Cooker

Install Yocto Cooker using PyPi:

$ python3 -m pip install --upgrade git+https://github.com/cpb-/yocto-cooker.git

Install Yocto Cooker from source:

$ git clone https://github.com/cpb-/yocto-cooker
$ cd yocto-cooker
$ sudo pip3 install .

Installing Yocto Cooker to contribute

To ease software modifications of Yocto Cooker itself, use the -e option with pip3 to install cooker with editable mode enabled. This way you can bring your modifications to cooker.py and call your updated cooker tool anywhere you want to run it.

sudo pip3 install -e .

cooker command line arguments

The cooker command accepts some arguments to know what to do. The first argument is the sub-command name (cook, build, init and others) sometimes followed by options, menu filename or build-config-names.

The top-level sub-command proposed by cooker is:

• cooker cook <menu-file> [<build-configs>...]: does the whole production job from the initial configuration and downloading up to the final image(s).

In fact, cooker cook is equivalent to a collection of low-level commands:

• cooker init <menu-file>: store the current menu filename into the .cookerconfig configuration file. The content of the configuration will be explained later.

• cooker update: fetch and checkout the version of each layer indicated in the current menu file.

• cooker generate: prepare the build-dir and configuration files (local.conf, bblayers.conf, template.conf) needed by Yocto Project.

• cooker build [-d] [-k] [-s] [<build-configs>...] runs bitbake to produce the given build-configs. If no build-config is indicated on the command line, cooker builds all the build-configs of the menu file. With the -d (or --download) option, cooker will only download all the needed files without doing any real compilation. With the -k (or --keepgoing) option, cooker will continue its work as long as possiible when encountering an error. With the -s (or --sdk) option, cooker will also build the cross-compiler toolchain and headers.

Each time you do some changes in the menu file, you may need to call:

• cooker update: if you have modified a commit number or you want to pull the latest version of a branch

• cooker generate: if you have modified a local.conf or a layers-attribute.

Then cooker build to restart the compilations.

Another useful sub-command is:

• cooker clean <recipe> [<build-configs>...] that will erase all files produced during the compilation of a recipe (and also the shared-state-cache associated files).

• cooker shell <build-config> provides you a new shell into the build directory with all the environment variables set. Some typical uses could be to run bitbake -c menuconfig virtual/kernel or runqemu qemuarm for instance. Simply exit the shell to return back to your previous working directory.

Each sub-command has additional command line options, e.g. with init the download-dir can be set using the -d switch.

How to build a standard image for Raspberry Pi 3?

Create and enter a project directory where everything will be downloaded, stored and built.

$ mkdir  ~/yocto-project
$ cd  ~/yocto-project

You can call cooker with a single command to build the whole content of a menu file:

$ cooker  cook  /path/to/yocto-cooker/sample-menus/pi3-sample-menu.json

Or you can proceed by using the low-level commands:

First, ask cooker to initialize the project-dir.

$ cooker  init  /path/to/yocto-cooker/sample-menus/pi3-sample-menu.json

Then let cooker download the layers mentioned in the menu.

$ cooker  update

Here no menu-file needs to be given. This works with the help of a .cookerconfig-file written in the project dir.

Generating the build-directories, one per build-configuration with

$ cooker  generate

When this is done, the directory-structure should looks like this:

$ ls
build-pi3 layers
$ ls layers
meta-openembedded  meta-raspberrypi  poky

Then you can run a full build with:

$ cooker  build

You will see the classic Yocto Project progress messages, and after a while the build will complete with:

Build Configuration:
BB_VERSION           = "1.44.0"
BUILD_SYS            = "x86_64-linux"
NATIVELSBSTRING      = "ubuntu-18.04"
TARGET_SYS           = "arm-poky-linux-gnueabi"
MACHINE              = "raspberrypi3"
DISTRO               = "poky"
DISTRO_VERSION       = "3.0.1"
TUNE_FEATURES        = "arm vfp cortexa7 neon vfpv4 thumb callconvention-hard"
TARGET_FPU           = "hard"
meta
meta-poky
meta-yocto-bsp       = "HEAD:12a4c177bb541b3187c7a54d5804f30c35f22d8c"
meta-oe              = "HEAD:e855ecc6d35677e79780adc57b2552213c995731"
meta-raspberrypi     = "HEAD:d17588fe8673b794b589335a753f4c1c90e12f88"

Initialising tasks: 100% |########################################################| Time: 0:00:04
Sstate summary: Wanted 1199 Found 1188 Missed 11 Current 0 (99% match, 0% complete)
NOTE: Executing Tasks
NOTE: Setscene tasks completed
NOTE: Tasks Summary: Attempted 3513 tasks of which 3189 didn't need to be rerun and all succeeded.

The image to write to your SD-card is:

build-pi3/tmp/deploy/images/raspberrypi3/core-image-base-raspberrypi3.rpi-sdimg

Directory map

cooker downloads the needed layers in the layers directory (by default) and creates the build-sub-directories into the builds directory. For example, after running cooker init <menu-file>; cooker update; cooker generate, the working directory might contain:

./---+---layers--+--- poky/
     |           +--- meta-openembedded/
     |           +--- meta-raspberrypi/
     |           +--- meta-sunxi/
     |           +--- meta-custom-layer/
     |
     +---builds--+--- build-bananapi/
     |           +--- build-pi3/
     |           +--- build-pi4/
     |
     +-download--+- (packages dowloaded by bitbake)
     |
     +-sstate-cache--...

Menu content

The menu file follows the JSON syntax and contains three main parts:

• sources: which describes how to download the required versions of the layers,
• layers: (optional) the list of the layers used globally for all targets or on a per-target-base
• builds: a collection of build-configurations to build.
• local.conf: a list of lines to be used in the configuration files of all build-configs (more on this below).

Sources

The sources section is an array of methods to get the layers. Each object of the array describes one layer.

The following attributes can be used:

• url: the URL used to download the layer. This attribute is mandatory.
• method: the way to handle the versioning of the layer. cooker is currently developed mainly for git. Other methods will be available in the future. The ignore method tells cooker to not download anything and to consider that the layer is already present.
• dir: the path of the layer relative to the directory where you run cooker. if method is ignore the layer must already be there and dir is mandatory. Otherwise, this is the place to store the downloaded layer.
• branch: the git branch to use. Especially useful when no rev is given.
• rev: the git tag or index of the revision desired.

cooker aims to build reproducible systems. Using a specific rev number for each layer is the best way to do this.

If only a branch attribute is given, cooker will try to pull the last remote update if an url is present. But this is not as reproducible as giving a fixed rev number or tag.

Common layers

This section contains an array of layers common to all build-configurations.

Most of the build-configurations uses

• poky/meta
• poky/meta-poky
• poky/meta-yocto-bsp
• meta-openembedded/meta-oe

Build configurations

The builds section is a collection of build-configurations. The name of the build-config is used to create the build directory.

For example, when preparing the compilation of the pi3 build-config, cooker creates the build-pi3 directory.

A build-configuration may contain the following attributes: specific layers, specific local.conf-entries, the bitbake-target to be produced and one or more parent build-configuration from which it inherits layers and local configuration entries.

Build-config specific layers

The layers attribute is an array of layer names which can be downloaded from the sources section.

We recommend to indicate in this section the layers used only for this build-config and to keep the more general ones in the layers section seen above.

Target specific configuration

The local.conf attribute is an array of lines to add into the build's configuration file.

cooker produces a standard local.conf file and add the given lines.

Basically, each build-config will contain at least a MACHINE specification with the form:

  "MACHINE = 'raspberrypi3'"

You can use simple quotes to surround variable value, and double quotes for the whole JSON line.

Comments

You can add a notes section (array of free strings ignored by cooker) to insert your own comments at the root-level of the menu or in the builds section.

Advanced use

If you intend to build for a custom system outside of Poky scheme (for example the Arago Project), you may need to call a initialization script different from poky/oe-init-build-env. In this case, you can specify it with the init-build-script attribute:

    "sources": [ ... ],
    "layers" : [ ... ],
    "init-build-script" : "my-layer/build-env-setup-script",
    "builds" : [ ... ],

When this attribute is not specified, the default init script is the usual poky/oe-init-build-env.

Internal tests

Ideally each functionally is unit and functional tested via a script within the test/-path.

To run the tests, cmake and ctest are used.

mkdir test-dir
cd test-dir

cmake path/to/yocto-cooker/test
make    # prepare the test-environment, nothing is compiled
ctest   # run the tests and show the result-summary

# useful ctest arguments

ctest -N   # shows the available tests
ctest -V   # shows verbose outputs of tests, all tests are run
ctest -R <pattern> -V   # run tests matching "pattern" and show their verbose output

Tests are written as a sequence of (cooker-)-commands and checks to see whether the expected result or output has been generated or not.

The CMakeLists.txt in the test-folder contains the list of tests to be run.

The name of the test is identical to its subdirectory in the test-folder, e.g., the basic/init-test is located in test/basic/init/. This folder has to contain a file called test (written in bash-syntax) which is sourced by the test-driver (driver.sh). A non-zero exit-code indicates that a test has failed. Any failing commands which end the test-run.

Within the script test the variable $S references the test's source-dir and $T the test's runtime-dir.

The runtime-dir is wiped out before a test-run, but can be inspected after a run.

Files related to and used by the test can be stored in the test's source-dir accessible with $S.

Test-result evaluation functions are available in the function.sh-library and are sourced by the test-driver.

What will cooker do?

The --dry-run (or -n) option can be used to see what a cooker invocation would produce without actually doing anything.

For example, cooker --dry-run cook <menu-filename> will display all the shell commands that cooker would execute. The output could even be redirected into a file that may later be run as a shell script.

The --dry-run output also displays the content of the files produced by cooker.

Licenses

The source code and the afferent files of the Yocto Cooker project are distributed under GPLv.2 license terms.

The present documention and the Yocto Cooker logo are distributed under Creative Commons 4.0 CC-By-Sa.