[yocto] Can Yocto treat layers like an external package?

[Patrick Ohly]

On Thu, 2017-05-25 at 16:04 +0000, Koehler, Yannick (HPN Aruba) wrote:
> This is my opinion, I think we could alter bitbake to retrieve the SRC_URI and S information from the bblayers.conf (instead of having recipes like for package).
> 
>     sample 
>     # LAYER_CONF_VERSION is increased each time build/conf/bblayers.conf
>     # changes incompatibly
>     LCONF_VERSION = "6"
> 
>     BBPATH = "${TOPDIR}"
>     BBFILES ?= ""
> 
>     BBLAYERS ?= " \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta-yocto \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta-yocto-bsp \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta-openembedded;SRC_URI="git://git@github.com/openembedded/meta-openembedded;protocol=ssh;branch=master";SRCREV="${AUTOREV}" \
>       "
>     BBLAYERS_NON_REMOVABLE ?= " \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta \
>       ##OEROOT##/meta-yocto \
>       "
> 
> Bitbake could then fetch/update the layer from the SRC_URI into the location given "##OEROOT##/meta-openembedded" prior to parsing.

Richard has indeed been thinking about a solution like that for 2.4.

I agree that it looks attractive at first glance. However, I see a
chicken-and-egg problem with no (easy?) solution: a developer who wants
to get started with a distro "foo" first needs to check out the repo
containing that distro's definition and local.conf.sample, then somehow
also check out a version of bitbake that works with that distro
revision, and only then can bitbake download the additional layers.

Perhaps we can make it so that bitbake has a separate tool that works
outside of a build environment and then sets up that environment.

-- 
Best Regards, Patrick Ohly

The content of this message is my personal opinion only and although
I am an employee of Intel, the statements I make here in no way
represent Intel's position on the issue, nor am I authorized to speak
on behalf of Intel on this matter.