[bitbake-devel] i think "bitbake -c" needs to be explained more thoroughly

[Robert P. J. Day]

  not sure it's entirely clear from the docs that, if one runs
"bitbake -c <task>", it is entirely possible that dependent tasks
might also be run.

  for instance, "bitbake -h" describes it as:

  -c CMD, --cmd=CMD     Specify the task to execute. The exact options
                        available depend on the metadata. Some examples might
                        be 'compile' or 'populate_sysroot' or 'listtasks' may
                        give a list of the tasks available.

and the bitbake user manual, section 1.5.2.2, reads:

"This next example "PROVIDES" the package name and also uses the "-c"
option to tell BitBake to just execute the do_clean task:

     $ bitbake -c clean foo

  both of these kind of suggest that *only* that task will be run, but
recently, darren hart explained it more clearly on the YP list:

https://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/2015-February/023822.html


"It will run everything necessary up to and including that task. If
everything, including that task, have already been run, it will run only
the specified task again.

You can verify this with:

1 $ bitbake virtual/kernel
2 $ bitbake virtual/kernel -c kernel_configme -f
3 $ bitbake virtual/kernel -c cleansstate
4 $ bitbake virtual/kernel -c kernel_configme -f"

and i don't think that's necessarily clear from the current docs.

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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