[oe] Some experimental layers and conclusions

[cshored at cshore.thecshore.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Dickinson [mailto:cshore at thecshore.com] 
Sent: May 5, 2017 3:52 AM
To: 'openembedded-devel at lists.openembeeded.org' <openembedded-devel at lists.openembeeded.org>
Subject: [oe] Some experimental layers and conclusions

Apologies if you get this twice; I got a bounce due to sending with wrong email address.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Trevor Woerner [mailto:twoerner at gmail.com]
> Sent: April 27, 2017 9:06 AM
> To: cshored at cshore.thecshore.com
> Cc: Openembedded-devel at lists.openembedded.org
> Subject: Re: [oe] Some experimental layers and conclusions
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Very interesting report, thanks for the info!
>
> On Thu 2017-04-27 @ 02:46:24 AM, cshored at cshore.thecshore.com wrote:
> > * OE doesn't have good *router* networking support (i.e. nothing 
> > like OpenWrt/LEDE's netifd and friends for a headless system, that 
> > one can configure by editing a text file, or by using a WebUI for 
> > handling multiple interfaces and VLANs and bridged (or not) wireless 
> > and wired networks, with easy firewall configuration).
>
> I wonder Khem's if meta-openwrt could have helped here? It looks like 
> it has a recipe for netifd and friends:

I hadn't actually gotten to the point of needing to worry about the networking yet. I was trying to avoid procd because of too many hard-coded openwrtisms (assumptions about how the system should loo) in a niche C project, and systemd for being too large.  From what I saw in the changelog the meta-openwrt is not working yet, and my guess it has to do with a lot assumptions about how the system is set up that are not well documented, and are openwrt-specific (I have some knowledge of how this setup works, so I can make it work, but I'm not sure it's worth it).

The real showstoppers where the lack of kernel (especially wireless support) without getting into e.g. wireless development which I don't have facilities to do legally and hence is off the table.

>
> 	https://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/branch/master/layer/
> meta-openwrt/
>
> Out of curiosity, did you try using musl? You don't mention which C 
> library you're using. I'd be curious to know if musl can help with 
> size reduction.

Yes, using musl, that's part of how I managed to get the size down as far as I did without getting into major patches for debloating.

>
> Is toybox mature enough to be used in these situations?
>
> 	http://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/recipe/28902/
>

Last I checked (about three months ago) it is not (I've peeked at it from time to time, but there are some important things like POSIX shell and working dhcpc that would have to come from busybox or a larger traditional sources.

I'm not sure how much size difference toybox will make over busybox, although I am interested for other reasons.

The biggest size challenge compared to openwrt is that openwrt has a lot of custom stuf to cut things down, mostly by excluding not needed functionality, or as with netifd, odhcd, uhttpd, etc, by writing minimalist versions of things that are needed.

Regards,

Daniel