OE working style

[James Mills]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 8:30 AM, Cliff Brake <cliff.brake at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Javi Roman <javiroman at kernel-labs.org> wrote:
>  > On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 10:27 AM, Javi Roman <javiroman at kernel-labs.org> wrote:
>  >  > Hi everybody.
>  >  >
>  >  >  I'm building a custom OE image by means of local overlay technique, so
>  >  >  I'm faced with a dilemma: I have to modify any rootfs files within the
>  >  >  final image, such as /etc/xorg.conf, /etc/profile, and many others. I
>  >  >  wonder which is the correct way to personalize those files: have I
>  >  >  modify the original bitbake packages (be means patchs in the local
>  >  >  overlay)?
>  >  >
>  >  >  Please, can anybody advice me about the most habitual behaviour?

>  1) create an overlay, and copy the package you want to modify to the
>  overlay.  This works pretty well and is clean, but over time it is
>  difficult to keep track of what files you modified if you do not take
>  notes, etc.

I use OpenEmbedded to generate and maintain several embedded
distributions for hardware products at work.  I use the overlay
method, combined with a "product-base" package.  The product-base
package installs the system-level files I am going to modify in a
custom location, and uses postinstall and postremove hooks to
backup/restore the original system files and link to my modified
version.  This allows me to maintain all of my system-specific changes
in a single package, without having to override base-files or other
low-level packages.  I then add that package to the machine "task" I
created, and it shows up in the machine image.

My overlay is kept under version control (svn).  This works very well
for me, since I do not update the bitbake image very often, and thus
avoid breaking any of my changed files.

Hope that helps!

~james