[Buildroot] Introducing new package type, side to side with generic-package

Thomas De Schampheleire patrickdepinguin at gmail.com
Sat Nov 2 10:27:12 UTC 2013


Hi Stanislav, all,

On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 2:46 AM, Stanislav Vlasic <svlasic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> thanx for answering my question.
>
> Not sure if you noticed, but currently in my buildroot, xbmc stuff is
> tightened to Amlogic ARM platform, as well as xbmc itself. It does not
> follow mainline xbmc and also depends on some other amlogic related
> packages. Some of these packages (like libamplayerm6) are not hosted on my
> github. Reason for that is simple - they have to be rewritten and parts of
> it needs to be published as compiled libraries because of license issue with
> Amlogic. Your question still stands? :)

The problem with buildroot forks is that many good developments in
these forks do not flow back into the mainline buildroot. This is not
only disadvantageous for mainline buildroot, but also for the fork
that has to keep up-to-date with developments in mainline buildroot.

I hadn't heard of Amlogic before, but as far as I can tell it's just
another device manufacturer. I don't see a reason why mainline
buildroot could not contain support for such devices, and the related
packages. Buildroot is just a set of scripts and Makefiles, the actual
package sources are hosted elsewhere.
And regarding the pre-compiled libraries you talk about: if it can be
considered as a 'package' that can be downloaded, then I also don't
see a big problem. I can't promise that everything will be accepted,
but at least it would be great to try it.


To the community: I was going to propose to create a github mirror for
buildroot to clarify which is the upstream project, but it seems one
already exists:
https://github.com/buildroot/buildroot
If I search on github for 'buildroot', I get 227 repository results :-(
Some are just personal repositories, but others are actual forks, like:

Amlogic-related:
https://github.com/Pivosgroup/buildroot-linux
https://github.com/vDorst/buildroot

Raspberry Pi:
https://github.com/nezticle/RaspberryPi-BuildRoot
https://github.com/gamaral/rpi-buildroot
https://github.com/huceke/buildroot-rbp
https://github.com/albertd/buildroot-rpi

GCW0 (open-source gaming console)
https://github.com/gcwnow/buildroot

BeagleBoard/BeagleBone:
https://github.com/nerves-project/bbone-erlang-buildroot
https://github.com/MaxGalemin/buildroot

Maybe we should add something to the website or README regarding
forks, something saying that we strongly discourage that and are in
general open in accepting board support in mainline buildroot. But
what do we do with all the defconfigs and supporting files. I think
there was some discussion at BDD about that, but I didn't follow it
well.

Best regards,
Thomas



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