[yocto] wic status

[Maciek Borzecki]

On czw, 2014-07-17 at 15:07 -0500, Tom Zanussi wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-07-17 at 19:38 +0200, Maciek Borzecki wrote:
> > On czw, 2014-07-17 at 09:18 -0500, Tom Zanussi wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2014-07-17 at 14:51 +0100, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> > > > On Thursday 17 July 2014 16:48:41 Scott Rifenbark wrote:
> > > > > On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Paul Eggleton <
> > > > > paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> > > > > > On Thursday 17 July 2014 14:25:16 Maciek Borzecki wrote:
> > > > > > > There used to be an entry about wic in development manual back in 1.5.2:
> > > > > > > http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.5.2/dev-manual/dev-manual.html
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > This entry is gone in current documentation and there seems to be no
> > > > > > > mention of wic at all:
> > > > > > > https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/current/dev-manual/dev-manual.html
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Scott, can you take a look at this if you haven't already?
> > > > >
> > > > > wic was documented in the 1.5.x set and was not put into the 1.6 set.  I
> > > > > was told that it was going to change or be further completed so it did not
> > > > > go in that development branch.  Wic was never documented in the 1.6 set.
> > > > 
> > > > Well, wic is still a part of the system in 1.6 and beyond so we do need to 
> > > > document it; as far as I can tell what was in the 1.5 manual linked above 
> > > > should be perfectly fine and we can just extend / update it as needed. Tom 
> > > > should be able to help fill in any blanks.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Right, wic is still included in the system, and like the rest of the
> > > system is undergoing continual development, so I'm not sure why it would
> > > be treated differently.
> > > 
> > > In any case, to make it easier for users and to avoid a mismatch with
> > > external documentation, over the past couple weeks I've submitted a set
> > > of patches (which have now been merged) that puts most of the help
> > > content into the tool itself, which is all now accessible via 'wic
> > > help'.
> > 
> > Right, I've seen your patches in master, very helpful.
> > 
> > There's one more thing that I'm a bit confused about. The 1.5.2 docs
> > state the following:
> > 
> > <excerpt start>
> > Here are the actual partition language commands used in the
> > mkefidisk.wks file to generate an image:
> > 
> >      # short-description: Create an EFI disk image
> >      # long-description: Creates a partitioned EFI disk image that the
> > user
> >      # can directly dd to boot media.
> > 
> >      part /boot --source bootimg --ondisk sda --fstype=efi --label msdos
> > --active --align 1024
> > <excerpt end>
> > 
> > I'd assume to find scripts/lib/mic/plugins/source/bootimg.py in the
> > tree, but the file is not there. Have I missed something? 
> > 
> 
> Yeah, the documentation is wrong - I need to update it.  Previous
> versions had --source bootimg treated specially and hard-coded the
> different cases - for --source bootimg, it would look at the --fstype
> and decide which hard-coded version to use, efi in this case.
> 
> Versions after that implemented those cases completely as --source
> plugins, which you see now as bootimg-efi and bootimg-bios plugins.
> 
> > (btw. I'm also assuming that bootimg would prepare a boot partitiong
> > without pushing any particular bootloader, like syslinux or whatever
> > right?)
> 
> Right now, those plugins do push specific bootloaders, which so far has
> been enough for our initial images.  You can use --source rootfs to
> create general-purpose partitions of the supported fstypes including
> contents needed for bootloaders, but the actual installation of a
> bootloader would need a plugin containing the logic to do that.  With
> support for more architectures and bootloaders coming online, we may
> want to provide a more generic mechanism or implementation, but I don't
> have any specifics in mind at the moment..

I've submitted this patch to meta-ti with a source plugin and *.wks for
getting wic to build a SD card image for BeagleBone Black:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.embedded.yocto.meta-ti/4171

I guess a more generic solution would actually set BOOTIMG_DIR and fill
contents of a directory that would end up as a boot partition. Sounds
like something that should be handled by a recipe.


-- 
Maciej Borzęcki
Senior Software Developer at Open-RnD Sp. z o.o., Poland
www.open-rnd.pl
mobile: +48 889 117 365, fax: +48 42 657 9079

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