[oe] [meta-ota][PATCH] meta-ota: add support for binary-delta images in a new layer

[Bartosz Golaszewski]

pon., 2 mar 2020 o 12:25 Otavio Salvador
<otavio.salvador at ossystems.com.br> napisał(a):
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 4:37 AM Bartosz Golaszewski <brgl at bgdev.pl> wrote:
> > niedz., 1 mar 2020 o 14:43 Otavio Salvador
> > <otavio.salvador at ossystems.com.br> napisał(a):
> > This single class surely doesn't justify a new layer but I have a
> > bunch of other stuff lined up for upstreaming if this is accepted.
> > This is thematically separate from most of the recipes in meta-oe too.
>
> So please give us an idea of what are your plans, so we can understand
> it better.
>

Sure. Next steps would be:

- Adding a class for generating provisioning partition images.
Basically allowing to split parts of the rootfs into separate ext4 (or
other) image similar to what meta-mender does in its mender-dataimg
class for /data but generalized for configurable directories.

- Adding an image recipe for a factory reset system, where we would
store the provisioning rootfs on a read-only partition together with
an initramfs the role of which would be to reflash the A/B partitions
to bring the device to a known state, this is something we do a lot in
our consulting work.

- Adding standardized target-side scripts for applying binary-delta
images. This uses the fact that many OTA frameworks support extensions
to their client programs. For instance the same script could be used
for applying the vcdiff and rsync patches both as a mender update
module and a rauc handler (with a thin compatibility layer in their
respective OE layers).

It still doesn't exhaust the subject but I think this really makes
sense in a separate layer than being sprinkled all-over meta-oe.

Khem, Armin: any thoughts?

Bart