[yocto] release management

[Russell Peterson]

Hello.

As I learn more about yocto and more importantly gain practical experience with it I have started to think about my release structure.  Is there a “best practices” document or something like that that speaks to this?

For example, how does everyone deal with “external” meta layer dependencies?  My software uses poky and meta-openembedded, of course.  It also relies on some recipes in meta-linaro and meta-virtualization.  I suspect there will be more as time goes by.  I have tweaked my layer priorities as well as used BBMASK to avoid unwanted bbappend files etc… works but seems slightly clunky… still better than duplicating recipes in my meta layer I think.

Also… I quickly came to the conclusion that “thou shall not modify poky or meta-openembedded”.  That is, ALWAYS use bbappend files instead of modifying external layers.  If I think that poky or some other layer has a recipe bug or want to change something in poky, for example, I plan to upstream a fix to the project and when that becomes available I rebase my poky and remove the bbappend from my meta layer. One thing about modifying poky and not using bbappend files is that I would then need to ship patches for poky instead of just directing users to to use this branch and this commit for release x.y.z.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Regards,

Russell