[yocto] Tracking changes in image

[John, Maxin]

Hi Bryan,

In addition to what Jon mentioned, “os-release” package in oe-core could help in tracking the operating system identification data in deployed images.

Since you are using u-boot, a customized logic involving environment variable in u-boot and accessing it from user-space with tools like “fw_printenv” available from u-boot-fwutils should help there.

Best Regards,
Maxin

From: yocto-bounces at yoctoproject.org [mailto:yocto-bounces at yoctoproject.org] On Behalf Of Jon Szymaniak
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2018 6:18 AM
To: bryan.fishell at gmail.com
Cc: yocto at yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [yocto] Tracking changes in image

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 10:13 Bryan Fishell <bryan.fishell at gmail.com<mailto:bryan.fishell at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi,
I want to be able to track different parts of my image, accessible from within userspace so I can programmatically (via an environment variable or something) what version of my patches have been applied. Ultimately, I want to be able to answer questions from the field to know 'what changed' in a deployed image. Is there already a method to do this? For example, our project has u-boot, a zImage and rootfs. Is there a way to tell the patched version (from my layer) for each of those so I can connect what is in the field to what is in my layer in version control?

Thanks in advance

--

Take a look at the documentation for the Build History feature. I think that may be a good starting point for you.

https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.5.1/dev-manual/dev-manual.html#maintaining-build-output-quality

Ultimately, the Build History provides you with the "what changed" in terms of build artifacts, which you can then trace back to individual packages and recipes.

On the other hand, version control of your own Yocto/OE layers (which has nothing to do with build history) should capture the "why was X changed".   Of course, this requires that your organization uses version control in a disciplined manner for any layer metadata they maintain.

Between these two, you should be able to develop a pretty clear picture of the "what and why" with respect to changes in an image.

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