[oe] interest in binary packaging?

[Chris Conroy]

I've developed a rather simplistic method for managing "binary" packages
within OE in order to satisfy certain licensing requirements. I am not
sure whether other users would have an interest in such a system, but
I'll go ahead and pitch what I have working so far to see if there is
any interest in improving it further or merging upstream.

Problem: Some packages we maintain internally are proprietary, and we
need mechanisms for dealing with different licensing schemes.

Approach: Allow third parties to build images using the packages but
without seeing source.

Solution: binary_ipk.bbclass defines a type of package which simply
installs a prebuilt .ipk for use in an image. 

Also, for ease of deployment, I've added a flag to the standard
package_ipk.bbclass which will copy relevant packages into the WORKDIR
for a 'binreleasable' package.

The result is a developer with access to the code builds package FOO out
of the overlay and deploys the WORKDIR/binrelease .ipks onto a mirror.

Another developer without access to the code uses the FOO-bin recipe
which inherits the binary_ipk.bbclass. It pulls the ipk from the mirror
and tells OE about any runtime dependencies of the package.

A simple binary recipe looks like this (I'll just put it inline since
it's so short)

####################EXAMPLE FOO BINARY RECIPE
inherit binary_ipk

DESCRIPTION = "FOO"
HOMEPAGE = ""
LICENSE = "FOO License"
RPROVIDES += "foo"
RDEPENDS += "bar"
BIN_PR = "r21"

SRC_URI = "${FOO_MIRROR}/foo-bin/foo_${PV}-${BIN_PR}_
${PACKAGE_ARCH}.ipk"
############END EXAMPLE


Perhaps there is a smarter way to do this with ipkg feeds, but I saw no
clear route to get here using them.

Thoughts, comments, questions, patches, etc... are all welcomed.



--Chris Conroy





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