[bitbake-devel] Developing in Python for Bitbake

[Paul Eggleton]

Hi Brad,

On Tuesday 17 December 2013 20:11:18 Brad Litterell wrote:
> I want to create a new bbclass for some internal build tooling and am fairly
> new to Python, so I have a couple of (hopefully quick) questions:
> 
> 1. Can you recommend an Python IDE for developing for bitbake on Linux? 
> There seem to be several, and if there is a consensus among the bitbake
> developers, I thought I'd start there.

I expect most people who work on BitBake don't use an IDE - just a text 
editor, and we probably all use different ones. I myself mostly use Kate (from 
KDE) which does provide syntax highlighting and completion though; at the 
command line I also use vi.

> 2. Is there a list of pre-defined variables?  For example, gitpkgv.bbclass
> starts with def get_git_pkgv(d, use_tags):

There's no reference for this level of things other than the code, I'm afraid, 
but we're more than happy to answer questions if you have any.

> "d" appears to be frequently assumed.  I'm guessing it is the same as the
> "D" variable in the recipes, but I am not sure whether there is a document
> that verifies this - and what else is available, or whether it is just
> tribal knowledge?

d is the data dictionary, as defined in bitbake/lib/bb/data_smart.py. d is not 
related to the "D" variable in OpenEmbedded (although just as with any other 
variable you can of course use d.getVar('D', True) to access it).

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre