[OE-core] No versioning for existing images

[Laszlo Papp]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 3:12 PM, Otavio Salvador
<otavio at ossystems.com.br> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Laszlo Papp <lpapp at kde.org> wrote:
>> I was wondering why existing images would not have version numbers
>> attached. Say, we have a core-image-minimal image, but from the
>> recipe, it is not possible which image version it is.
>>
>> Perhaps, it is just my ignorance and lack of understand, but for the
>> moment, it seems to be an important information for e.g. distribution
>> vendors and image creators to have an image version and the
>> corresponding packages and versions attached to that particular
>> version.
>>
>> It is easier to do a software upgrade then if you wish to do that
>> based on the information of a certain image variant. I mean, it will
>> lead to more manageable and reproducable images.
>>
>> It is possible that I am not aware of something important, so please
>> enlighten me. It would be nice to see how other OE users do a system
>> upgrade.
>>
>> For instance, the MeeGo Nokia phone had a software version information
>> in the settings, and that is something I would personally consider as
>> the image version, but again, there might be better ways. Please share
>> good practices in here., or alternatively, feel free to point me to
>> any documentation, examples, etc.
>
> You can have a product-version recipe which populates it based on the
> information you need (write it in a file in /etc and change PV as
> need). That way you can even track this using buildhistory. We do it
> for several products and it works quite well.
>
> All the need structure for it to work is avaiblue, just make the
> recipes in your product layer.

Is your layer available in the open for further study? If not, can you
give a minimal example?

I personally feel separate recipe for a version number a bit too much
for this. I would prefer a variable for it, like "PRODUCT_VERSION" or
so. I think, that would be gratifying.