The BitBake task executor together with various types of configuration files form the OpenEmbedded Core. This section provides an overview of the BitBake task executor and the configuration files by describing what they are used for and how they interact. BitBake handles the parsing and execution of the data files. The data itself is of various types: Recipes: Provides details about particular pieces of software. Class Data: An abstraction of common build information (e.g. how to build a Linux kernel). Configuration Data: Defines machine-specific settings, policy decisions, etc. Configuration data acts as the glue to bind everything together. What follows are a large number of examples of BitBake metadata. Any syntax which isn't supported in any of the aforementioned areas will be documented as such.

VARIABLE = "value" In this example, VARIABLE is value.

BitBake supports variables referencing one another's contents using a syntax which is similar to shell scripting A = "aval" B = "pre${A}post" This results in A containing aval and B containing preavalpost.

A ?= "aval" If A is set before the above is called, it will retain its previous value. If A is unset prior to the above call, A will be set to aval. This assignment is immediate, so if there are multiple "?=" assignments to a single variable, the first of those will be used.

A ??= "somevalue" A ??= "someothervalue" If A is set before the above, it will retain that value. If A is unset prior to the above, A will be set to someothervalue. This is a lazy or weak assignment in that the assignment does not occur until the end of the parsing process, so that the last, rather than the first, "??=" assignment to a given variable will be used. Any other setting of A using "=" or "?=" will, however, override the value set with "??=".

The ":=" operator results in a variable's contents being expanded immediately, rather than when the variable is actually used: T = "123" A := "${B} ${A} test ${T}" T = "456" B = "${T} bval" C = "cval" C := "${C}append" In this example, A would contain test 123, B would contain 456 bval, and C would be cvalappend.

B = "bval" B += "additionaldata" C = "cval" C =+ "test" In this example, B is now bval additionaldata and C is test cval.

B = "bval" B .= "additionaldata" C = "cval" C =. "test" In this example, B is now bvaladditionaldata and C is testcval. In contrast to the above appending and prepending operators, no additional space will be introduced.

B = "bval" B_append = " additional data" C = "cval" C_prepend = "additional data " This example results in B becoming bval additional data and C becoming additional data cval. The spaces in _append. Unlike the "+=" operator, additional space is not automatically added. You must take steps to add space yourself.

FOO = "123 456 789 123456 123 456 123 456" FOO_remove = "123" FOO_remove = "456" In this example, FOO is now 789 123456.

Variables can have associated flags which provide a way of tagging extra information onto a variable. Several flags are used internally by BitBake but they can be used externally too if needed. The standard operations mentioned above also work on flags. VARIABLE[SOMEFLAG] = "value" In this example, VARIABLE has a flag, SOMEFLAG that is set to value.

DATE = "${@time.strftime('%Y%m%d',time.gmtime())}" This would result in the DATE variable containing today's date.

OVERRIDES is a “:” separated variable containing each item for which you want to satisfy conditions. So, if you have a variable that is conditional on “arm”, and “arm” is in OVERRIDES, then the “arm” specific version of the variable is used rather than the non-conditional version. Here is an example: OVERRIDES = "architecture:os:machine" TEST = "defaultvalue" TEST_os = "osspecificvalue" TEST_condnotinoverrides = "othercondvalue" In this example, TEST would be osspecificvalue, due to the condition “os” being in OVERRIDES.

BitBake also supports appending and prepending to variables based on whether something is in OVERRIDES. Here is an example: DEPENDS = "glibc ncurses" OVERRIDES = "machine:local" DEPENDS_append_machine = "libmad" In this example, DEPENDS is set to "glibc ncurses libmad".

Despite the documentation of the different forms of variable definition above, it can be hard to work out what happens when variable operators are combined. Following are some common scenarios where variables interact that can confuse users. There is often confusion about which order overrides and the various "append" operators take effect: OVERRIDES = "foo" A_foo_append = "X" In this case, X is unconditionally appended to the variable A_foo. Since foo is an override, A_foo would then replace A. OVERRIDES = "foo" A = "X" A_append_foo = "Y" In this case, only when foo is in OVERRIDES, Y is appended to the variable A so the value of A would become XY (NB: no spaces are appended). OVERRIDES = "foo" A_foo_append = "X" A_foo_append += "Y" This behaves as per the first case above, but the value of A would be "X Y" instead of just "X". A = "1" A_append = "2" A_append = "3" A += "4" A .= "5" Would ultimately result in A taking the value "1 4523" since the "_append" operator executes at the same time as the expansion of other overrides.

Key expansion happens at the data store finalization time just before overrides are expanded. A${B} = "X" B = "2" A2 = "Y" So in this case A2 would take the value of "X".

This is only supported in .bb and .bbclass files. The inherit directive is a means of specifying what classes of functionality your .bb requires. It is a rudimentary form of inheritance. For example, you can easily abstract out the tasks involved in building a package that uses autoconf and automake, and put that into a bbclass for your packages to make use of. A given bbclass is located by searching for classes/filename.bbclass in BBPATH, where filename is what you inherited.

This directive causes BitBake to parse whatever file you specify, and insert it at that location, which is not unlike Make. However, if the path specified on the include line is a relative path, BitBake will locate the first one it can find within BBPATH.

In contrast to the include directive, require will raise a ParseError if the file to be included cannot be found. Otherwise it will behave just like the include directive.

This is only supported in .bb and .bbclass files. Python functions are in the global namespace so should use unique names. def get_depends(d): if d.getVar('SOMECONDITION', True): return "dependencywithcond" else: return "dependency" SOMECONDITION = "1" DEPENDS = "${@get_depends(d)}" This would result in DEPENDS containing dependencywithcond.

This is only supported in .bb and .bbclass files. As with most languages, functions are the building blocks that define operations. Bitbake supports shell and Python functions. An example shell function definition is: some_function () { echo "Hello World" } An example Python function definition is: python some_python_function () { d.setVar("TEXT", "Hello World") print d.getVar("TEXT", True) } In python functions, the "bb" and "os" modules are already imported, there is no need to import those modules. The datastore, "d" is also a global variable and always available to these functions automatically. Bitbake will execute functions of this form using the bb.build.exec_func(), which can also be called from Python functions to execute other functions, either shell or Python based. Shell functions can only execute other shell functions. There is also a second way to declare python functions with parameters which takes the form: def some_python_function(arg1, arg2): print arg1 + " " + arg2 The difference is that the second form takes parameters, the datastore is not available automatically and must be passed as a parameter and these functions are not called with the exec_func() but are executed with direct Python function calls. The "bb" and "os" modules are still automatically available and there is no need to import them.

NOTE: This is only supported in .bb and .bbclass files. In BitBake, each step that needs to be run for a given .bb is known as a task. There is a command addtask to add new tasks (must be a defined Python executable metadata and must start with do_) and describe intertask dependencies. python do_printdate () { import time print time.strftime('%Y%m%d', time.gmtime()) } addtask printdate after do_fetch before do_build This defines the necessary Python function and adds it as a task which is now a dependency of do_build, the default task. If anyone executes the do_build task, that will result in do_printdate being run first.

Tasks support a number of flags which control various functionality of the task. These are as follows: 'dirs' - directories which should be created before the task runs 'cleandirs' - directories which should be created before the task runs but should be empty 'noexec' - marks the tasks as being empty and no execution required. These are used as dependency placeholders or used when added tasks need to be subsequently disabled. 'nostamp' - don't generate a stamp file for a task. This means the task is always rexecuted. 'fakeroot' - this task needs to be run in a fakeroot environment, obtained by adding the variables in FAKEROOTENV to the environment. 'umask' - the umask to run the task under. For the 'deptask', 'rdeptask', 'depends', 'rdepends' and 'recrdeptask' flags please see the dependencies section.

The first kind of metadata in BitBake is configuration metadata. This metadata is global, and therefore affects all packages and tasks that are executed. BitBake will first search the current working directory for an optional conf/bblayers.conf configuration file. This file is expected to contain a BBLAYERS variable that is a space delimited list of 'layer' directories. For each directory in this list, a conf/layer.conf file will be searched for and parsed with the LAYERDIR variable being set to the directory where the layer was found. The idea is these files will setup BBPATH and other variables correctly for a given build directory automatically for the user. BitBake will then expect to find conf/bitbake.conf file somewhere in the user specified BBPATH. That configuration file generally has include directives to pull in any other metadata (generally files specific to architecture, machine, local and so on). Only variable definitions and include directives are allowed in .conf files.

BitBake classes are our rudimentary inheritance mechanism. As briefly mentioned in the metadata introduction, they're parsed when an inherit directive is encountered, and they are located in the classes/ directory relative to the directories in BBPATH.

A BitBake (.bb) file is a logical unit of tasks to be executed. Normally this is a package to be built. Inter-.bb dependencies are obeyed. The files themselves are located via the BBFILES variable, which is set to a space separated list of .bb files, and does handle wildcards.

This is only supported in .bb and .bbclass files. BitBake allows installation of event handlers. Events are triggered at certain points during operation, such as the beginning of operation against a given .bb, the start of a given task, task failure, task success, and so forth. The intent is to make it easy to do things like email notification on build failure. addhandler myclass_eventhandler python myclass_eventhandler() { from bb.event import getName from bb import data print("The name of the Event is %s" % getName(e)) print("The file we run for is %s" % data.getVar('FILE', e.data, True)) } This event handler gets called every time an event is triggered. A global variable "e" is defined. "e.data" contains an instance of "bb.data". With the getName(e) method one can get the name of the triggered event. The above event handler prints the name of the event and the content of the FILE variable. During a Build, the following common events occur: bb.event.ConfigParsed() bb.event.ParseStarted() bb.event.ParseProgress() bb.event.ParseCompleted() bb.event.BuildStarted() bb.build.TaskStarted() bb.build.TaskInvalid() bb.build.TaskFailedSilent() bb.build.TaskFailed() bb.build.TaskSucceeded() bb.event.BuildCompleted() bb.cooker.CookerExit() Other events that occur based on specific requests to the server: bb.event.TreeDataPreparationStarted() bb.event.TreeDataPreparationProgress bb.event.TreeDataPreparationCompleted bb.event.DepTreeGenerated bb.event.CoreBaseFilesFound bb.event.ConfigFilePathFound bb.event.FilesMatchingFound bb.event.ConfigFilesFound bb.event.TargetsTreeGenerated

Two BitBake features exist to facilitate the creation of multiple buildable incarnations from a single recipe file. The first is BBCLASSEXTEND. This variable is a space separated list of classes used to "extend" the recipe for each variant. Here is an example that results in a second incarnation of the current recipe being available. This second incarnation will have the "native" class inherited. BBCLASSEXTEND = "native" The second feature is BBVERSIONS. This variable allows a single recipe to build multiple versions of a project from a single recipe file, and allows you to specify conditional metadata (using the OVERRIDES mechanism) for a single version, or an optionally named range of versions: BBVERSIONS = "1.0 2.0 git" SRC_URI_git = "git://someurl/somepath.git" BBVERSIONS = "1.0.[0-6]:1.0.0+ \ 1.0.[7-9]:1.0.7+" SRC_URI_append_1.0.7+ = "file://some_patch_which_the_new_versions_need.patch;patch=1" The name of the range will default to the original version of the recipe, so given OE, a recipe file of foo_1.0.0+.bb will default the name of its versions to 1.0.0+. This is useful, as the range name is not only placed into overrides; it's also made available for the metadata to use in the form of the BPV variable, for use in file:// search paths (FILESPATH).

BitBake handles dependencies at the task level since to allow for efficient operation with multiple processes executing in parallel, a robust method of specifying task dependencies is needed.

Where the dependencies are internal to a given .bb file, the dependencies are handled by the previously detailed addtask directive.

DEPENDS lists build time dependencies. The 'deptask' flag for tasks is used to signify the task of each item listed in DEPENDS which must have completed before that task can be executed. do_configure[deptask] = "do_populate_staging" In the previous example, the do_populate_staging task of each item in DEPENDS must have completed before do_configure can execute.

The PACKAGES variable lists runtime packages and each of these can have RDEPENDS and RRECOMMENDS runtime dependencies. The 'rdeptask' flag for tasks is used to signify the task of each item runtime dependency which must have completed before that task can be executed. do_package_write[rdeptask] = "do_package" In the previous example, the do_package task of each item in RDEPENDS must have completed before do_package_write can execute.

These are specified with the 'recrdeptask' flag which is used to signify the task(s) of dependencies which must have completed before that task can be executed. It works by looking though the build and runtime dependencies of the current recipe as well as any inter-task dependencies the task has, then adding a dependency on the listed task. It will then recurse through the dependencies of those tasks and so on. It may be desireable to recurse not just through the dependencies of those tasks but through the build and runtime dependencies of dependent tasks too. If that is the case, the taskname itself should be referenced in the task list (e.g. do_a[recrdeptask] = "do_a do_b").

The 'depends' flag for tasks is a more generic form which allows an inter-dependency on specific tasks rather than specifying the data in DEPENDS. do_patch[depends] = "quilt-native:do_populate_staging" In the previous example, the do_populate_staging task of the target quilt-native must have completed before the do_patch task can execute. The 'rdepends' flag works in a similar way but takes targets in the runtime namespace instead of the build-time dependency namespace.

It is often necessary to manipulate variables within python functions and the Bitbake data store has an API which allows this. The operations available are: d.getVar("X", expand=False) returns the value of variable "X", expanding the value if specified. d.setVar("X", value) sets the value of "X" to "value". d.appendVar("X", value) adds "value" to the end of variable X. d.prependVar("X", value) adds "value" to the start of variable X. d.delVar("X") deletes the variable X from the data store. d.renameVar("X", "Y") renames variable X to Y. d.getVarFlag("X", flag, expand=False) gets given flag from variable X but does not expand it. d.setVarFlag("X", flag, value) sets given flag for variable X to value. setVarFlags will not clear previous flags. Think of this method as addVarFlags. d.appendVarFlag("X", flag, value) Need description. d.prependVarFlag("X", flag, value) Need description. d.delVarFlag("X", flag) Need description. d.setVarFlags("X", flagsdict) sets the flags specified in the dict() parameter. d.getVarFlags("X") returns a dict of the flags for X. d.delVarFlags deletes all the flags for a variable.