[yocto-ab] Terminology - Some draft definitions

[Mark Orvek]

>> "industry quality"? How does this differ from "commercial quality"?
>
>I suspect commercial quality would be better :)

I suggest we avoid terms that will cause conflict with the member
companies.  How about "improved quality tools for embedded system
developers"?

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: yocto-ab-bounces at yoctoproject.org
[mailto:yocto-ab-bounces at yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Richard Purdie
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 6:49 AM
To: Ed Nash
Cc: yocto-ab at yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [yocto-ab] Terminology - Some draft definitions

On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 09:27 -0400, Ed Nash wrote:
> On 05/16/2011 07:50 AM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> > In the last steering group meeting I promised to write something down
about what
> > some of the words we use mean, particularly what OE, Poky and Yocto
all
> > mean. What follows is a first draft style start at this:
>
> Thanks Richard for getting this started.
>
> > Yocto Project - The overall project aiming to make Linux on "embedded"
> > platforms succeed by providing industry-quality tooling for developers
>
> "industry quality"? How does this differ from "commercial quality"?

I suspect commercial quality would be better :)

> > and making Linux easier to use in "embedded" products. It's scope
> > includes anything that can further that objective.
>
> cool.
>
> > OpenEmbedded - An architecture and build system technology in the form
> > of an open source project.
>
> What does "architecture" apply to? What software components are
> compliant with this architecture? Does this represent choices I have to
> make in my product design? Oh wait, reading below "OpenEmbedded Core",
> it sounds like architecture means "how you write a recipe" - correct?

Yes, the architecture refers to the metadata format and the process by
which the system takes than and produces the end result.

> > Bitbake - The tool used by OpenEmbedded to parse the metadata and
> > execute tasks
>
> Crystal clear! :)
>
> > OpenEmbedded Core - A core set of metadata which most embedded style
> > systems commonly need and conforms to the OpenEmbedded architecture.
> > Shared by Yocto and OpenEmbedded and has an aim of achieving the
highest
> > metadata quality at the expense of some additional process.
>
> "process"? Can you give an example.

We're using a pull model with a clear submission process and that
changes need to be of a certain quality (e.g. changes shouldn't break QA
tests or they ultimately would get backed out).

> > Meta-OpenEmbedded - Metadata for less commonly used software
components
> > of embedded systems. Has different submission and quality objectives.
>
> I follow, though it begs the question what are the submission and
> quality objectives?

Ensuring recent versions are used, that they build/run for all core CPU
architectures, that the recipes are cleanly and clearly written, patches
clearly documented and so on. The submission part of this is because
meta-oe might be under a different less stringent process to that of
OE-Core.

> > Poky - A vetted and QA'd combination of bitbake, OpenEmbedded-Core,
> > documentation, some reference board support and any needed glue to
> > provide support for a defined architecture list. It is supplied in a
> > pre-integrated package which has known QA tests and results for its
> > releases which provide a stable base people can build upon. Its
provided
> > and maintained by the Yocto project.
>
> Frankly, this sounds like a great definition for the yocto project!

There is more to the yocto project than this. There are several other
components such as:

* Kernel Tooling
* Pseudo
* Swabber
* ADT IDE plugins (Eclipse)
* Image Creator UI

and Poky is just one component part of this list, albeit a significant
one. How we better communicate this I don't know but I still believe we
need a name for the "build system" component of Yocto. As soon as we
think otherwise we limit ourselves just to being about a build system
and miss a key part of what we're trying to do which is develop a *set*
of embedded tools, not just the build system.

Cheers,

Richard


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