[yocto] Best practice for files copied directly into sysroot?

[Bryan Evenson]

Michael,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: yocto-bounces at yoctoproject.org [mailto:yocto-
> bounces at yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Michael Habibi
> Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2015 10:26 AM
> To: yocto at yoctoproject.org
> Subject: [yocto] Best practice for files copied directly into sysroot?
> 
> I am working on potentially migrating our distribution to Yocto (will be a long,
> long process). We have an area of our filesystem where any file placed will go
> directly into the rootfs of the target. This works well with our product, as we
> have certain binaries and scripts that need to be copied directly, and there's
> no other real step involved (no compilation, etc). Is there a best practice or
> existing class that handles this? I saw mention of a binary/ directory but I
> wasn't sure if that was for this or something else.
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael

I'm glad I decided to answer your question because I think I found an easier way to do it than I have been doing this in the past.  If you want to be able to update the files on your system at a later date, you will want to make your own recipe which installs the binaries and scripts onto the rootfs.  In general you create a recipe which does not have do_configure or do_compile tasks.  There is a class that does this already called "bin_package" that does this for you.  See the "Packaging Externally Produced Binaries" section of the manual here: http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.0/mega-manual/mega-manual.html#new-recipe-testing-examples.   So if you include the line "inherit bin_package" and follow the instructions in that section of the manual, it should install all the files to the rootfs that are included in the recipe.

Regards,
Bryan