[OE-core] Wic and "live" images

[Ian Geiser]

 ---- On Mon, 23 May 2016 06:36:23 -0400 Ed Bartosh <ed.bartosh at linux.intel.com> wrote ---- 
 > On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 05:52:45AM -0400, Ian Geiser wrote: 
 > > Greetings, I am trying to learn "wic" and have been confused as how to create a "live" style image.  I am following "http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.5.2/dev-manual/dev-manual.html#creating-partitioned-images" but am getting confused on the target to use to create the a file system that has a single squashfs file containing my root file system.   
 > >  
 > > My desired partition layout is as follows: 
 > >       40MiB                 40MiB               300MiB 
 > > +--------------------+-----------------+-----------------------------+ 
 > > |      BOOT (esp)    |    DATA (fat)   |          ROOT (live)        |   
 > > +--------------------+-----------------+-----------------------------+ 
 > >  
 > > BOOT - efi boot partition with kernel and initramfs 
 > > DATA - generic fat filesystem to hold configuration files 
 > > ROOT - an ext4 filesystem that contains a single os.img, which is a squashfs file. 
 > >  
 > > I have ROOT and DATA figured out but I am at a loss as how to generate the os.img file and copy it into ROOT.  If I generate the os.img file with bitbake and then use the "-r" option to manually supply a directory structure it works, but I would rather have it done from a wks file for automation reasons. 
 > >  
 > > Any hints? 
 > I'd suggest to use wic image type and generate your image by bitbake. 
 > You can find example wic-image-minimal.bb and wic-image-minimal.wks in ../meta-selftest/recipes-test/images/ 
 >  
This is where I started.  I was able to make it work but not with my configuration above.  It looks like I can use a type of "fsimage" for my "ROOT" partition, but I have not been able to figure out the syntax there yet.  For "BOOT" I am at a complete loss.  In theory "bootimg-efi" but there doesn't seem to be a way to provide an initramfs.

 > You can probably do the same by using wic plugins, but I'd not suggest 
 > to go this way. Using wic image type is simpler, more consistent, easier to do and provides higher level of automation. 

Is using the wic image type and a plugin mutually exclusive?

Thanks!