poky/handbook/faq.xml

<!DOCTYPE appendix PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">

<appendix id='faq'>
<title>FAQ</title>
<qandaset>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                How does Poky differ from <ulink url='http://www.openembedded.org/'>OpenEmbedded</ulink>?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                Poky is a derivative of <ulink 
                url='http://www.openembedded.org/'>OpenEmbedded</ulink>, a stable, 
                smaller subset focused on the GNOME Mobile environment. Development
                in Poky is closely tied to OpenEmbedded with features being merged
                regularly between the two for mutual benefit.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                How can you claim Poky is stable?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                There are three areas that help with stability;

            <itemizedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para>
                        We keep Poky small and focused - around 650 packages compared to over 5000 for full OE
                    </para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>
                        We only support hardware that we have access to for testing
                    </para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>
                        We have a Buildbot which provides continuous build and integration tests
                    </para>
                </listitem>
            </itemizedlist>
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                How do I get support for my board added to Poky?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                There are two main ways to get a board supported in Poky;
            <itemizedlist>
                <listitem>
                    <para>    
                    Send us the board if we don't have it yet
                    </para>
                </listitem>
                <listitem>
                    <para>
                    Send us bitbake recipes if you have them (see the Poky handbook to find out how to create recipes)
                    </para>
                </listitem>
            </itemizedlist>
                    Usually if it's not a completely exotic board then adding support in Poky should be fairly straightforward.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                Are there any products running poky ?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                The <ulink url='http://vernier.com/labquest/'>Vernier Labquest</ulink> is using Poky (for more about the Labquest see the case study at OpenedHand). There are a number of pre-production devices using Poky and we will announce those as soon as they are released.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                What is the Poky output ?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                The output of a Poky build will depend on how it was started, as the same set of recipes can be used to output various formats. Usually the output is a flashable image ready for the target device.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                How do I add my package to Poky?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                To add a package you need to create a bitbake recipe - see the Poky handbook to find out how to create a recipe.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                Do I have to reflash my entire board with a new poky image when recompiling a package?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                Poky can build packages in various formats, ipk (for ipkg/opkg), Debian package (.deb), or RPM. The packages can then be upgraded using the package tools on the device, much like on a desktop distribution like Ubuntu or Fedora.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                What is GNOME Mobile? What's the difference between GNOME Mobile and GNOME?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                <ulink url='http://www.gnome.org/mobile/'>GNOME Mobile</ulink> is a subset of the GNOME platform targeted at mobile and embedded devices. The the main difference between GNOME Mobile and standard GNOME is that desktop-orientated libraries have been removed, along with deprecated libraries, creating a much smaller footprint. 
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                How do I make Poky work in RHEL/CentOS?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                To get Poky working under RHEL/CentOS 5.1 you need to first install some required packages. The standard CentOS packages needed are:
                <itemizedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>
                            "Development tools" (selected during installation)
                        </para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>
                            texi2html
                        </para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>
                            compat-gcc-34
                        </para>
                    </listitem>
                </itemizedlist>
            </para>

            <para>
                On top of those the following external packages are needed:
                <itemizedlist>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>
                            python-sqlite2 from <ulink
                                url='http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/python-sqlite2/'>DAG
                                repository</ulink>
                        </para>
                    </listitem>
                    <listitem>
                        <para>
                            help2man from <ulink
                                url='http://centos.karan.org/el5/extras/testing/i386/RPMS/help2man-1.33.1-2.noarch.rpm'>Karan
                                repository</ulink>
                        </para>
                    </listitem>
                </itemizedlist>
            </para>

            <para>
                Once these packages are installed Poky will be able to build standard images however there 
                may be a problem with QEMU segfaulting. You can either disable the generation of binary 
                locales by setting <glossterm><link linkend='var-ENABLE_BINARY_LOCALE_GENERATION'>ENABLE_BINARY_LOCALE_GENERATION</link>
                </glossterm> to "0" or remove the linux-2.6-execshield.patch from the kernel and rebuild 
                it since its that patch which causes the problems with QEMU.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                I see lots of 404 responses for files on http://folks.o-hand.com/~richard/poky/sources/*. Is something wrong?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                Nothing is wrong, Poky will check any configured source mirrors before downloading 
                from the upstream sources. It does this searching for both source archives and 
                pre-checked out versions of SCM managed software. This is so in large installations, 
                it can reduce load on the SCM servers themselves. The address above is one of the 
                default mirrors configured into standard Poky so if an upstream source disappears, 
                we can place sources there so builds continue to work.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                I have a machine specific data in a package for one machine only but the package is 
                 being marked as machine specific in all cases, how do I stop it?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                Set <glossterm><link linkend='var-SRC_URI_OVERRIDES_PACKAGE_ARCH'>SRC_URI_OVERRIDES_PACKAGE_ARCH</link>
                </glossterm> = "0" in the .bb file but make sure the package is manually marked as 
                machine specific in the case that needs it. The code which handles <glossterm><link 
                linkend='var-SRC_URI_OVERRIDES_PACKAGE_ARCH'>SRC_URI_OVERRIDES_PACKAGE_ARCH</link></glossterm>
		is in base.bbclass.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                I'm behind a firewall and need to use a proxy server. How do I do that?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
                Most source fetching by Poky is done by wget and you therefore need to specify the proxy 
                settings in a .wgetrc file in your home directory. Example settings in that file would be
                'http_proxy = http://proxy.yoyodyne.com:18023/' and 'ftp_proxy = http://proxy.yoyodyne.com:18023/'.
                Poky also includes a site.conf.sample file which shows how to configure cvs and git proxy servers
                if needed.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
    <qandaentry>
        <question>
            <para>
                I'm using Ubuntu Intrepid and am seeing build failures. Whats wrong?
            </para>
        </question>
        <answer>
            <para>
	        In Intrepid, Ubuntu turned on by default normally optional compile-time security features 
		and warnings. There are more details at <ulink
                url='https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompilerFlags'>https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompilerFlags</ulink>.
		You can work around this problem by disabling those options by adding " -Wno-format-security -U_FORTIFY_SOURCE" 
		to the BUILD_CPPFLAGS variable in conf/bitbake.conf.
            </para>
        </answer>
    </qandaentry>
</qandaset>
</appendix>
<!-- 
vim: expandtab tw=80 ts=4 
-->