jjl772 / buildroot-site

Configurations and patches for buildroot

#CLONING SLAC-CONFIGURATION OF BUILDROOT

##Directory Structure

###TOP Directory

I like to structure my buildroot tree in the following way:

At the top I like to have a buildroot-version specific directory:

buildroot-<version>/ e.g.,  buildroot-2019.08/

Inside the top directory there are three principal subdirectories:

####1. DOWNLOAD Subdirectory

download/

is where the build process stores downloaded sources. It is handy to keep them there so that if you rebuild everything you don't have to download everything again. Also, if you have different configurations of buildroot then they can all share the same downloads.

Nowadays I even go a bit further and share the download directory among different buildroot versions in this case I make download a symlink to some outside location.

####2. BUILDROOT Subdirectory

buildroot-<version>[-<config>]/

This is the top directory of the unpacked buildroot sources. Everything that buildroot builds ends up somewhere underneath this directory.

If you unpack the buildroot distribution in the directory then the unpack procedure creates a buildroot-<version> directory.

It should be noted that buildroot does not currently support building different configurations (e.g., different targets or kernel versions) from a single source tree. Therefore you must maintain/build different configurations side-by-side. I do this by unpacking the buildroot source multiple times and renaming the top directories after the configuration.

E.g., if I have stable and development versions for x86 (assume version 2019.08) then I could have

buildroot-2019.08/download/
buildroot-2019.08/buildroot-2019.08-x86-devl/
buildroot-2019.08/buildroot-2019.08-x86/

which I obtained doing

chdir buildroot-2019.08/
tar xf ../download/buildroot-2019.08.tar.bz2
mv buildroot-2019.08 buildroot-2019.08-x86
tar xf ../download/buildroot-2019.08.tar.bz2
mv buildroot-2019.08 buildroot-2019.08-x86-devl

If you only build for the same target architecture then you could also omit the x86. Nothing about these names is special or required.

####3. SLAC site Subdirectory

All the site specific modifications of buildroot and other software as well as configuration files for buildroot, busybox, kernel etc. are maintained in git and cloned into a

site-top/

If you want different builds to use different branches or releases of site-top/ then there can be multiple clones, e.g. a stable and development one:

site-top/
site-top-devl/

####4. Symlink Connecting Buildroot to Site-Top

Each build/configuration is connected to a site-top by means of a symlink. E.g., for the aforementioned stable and development builds there could be

buildroot-2019.08-x86/site       -> ../site-top
buildroot-2019.08-x86-devl/site  -> ../site-top-devl

####4. HOST Subdirectory

As of 2014.02 the buildroot configuration is set up so that the toolchain is installed into the host/ subdirectory. This enables different variants of the same buildroot version (e.g., different kernel configs or a 'test' variant) to share a toolchain. (A config which wishes to share this toolchain must in-turn be configured accordingly.)

External software can just use the toolchain in

<TOP>/buildroot-<version>/host/<host-arch>/<target-arch>/usr/bin/

This structure supports multiple host architectures (since we still use 32-bit build machines in some places at slac).

NOTE: if you issue make clean at the buildroot top then this will erase everything installed into the host area, too. I usually don't want this to happen and I simply

rm -rf output

from the buildroot top instead of issuing make clean.

##INSTALLATION

All the following steps assume version 2019.08. If you are using a different version, please modify the instructions accordingly.

###1. Preparation

The first steps reflect what has been described under 'directory structure' above.

Create the TOP directory and chdir there:

mkdir <prefix>/buildroot-2019.08
cd    <prefix>/buildroot-2019.08

Create download directory:

mkdir download

Download buildroot

wget -P download/ http://buildroot.uclibc.org/downloads/buildroot-2019.08.tar.bz2

Unpack

tar xf download/buildroot-2019.08.tar.bz2

You might now want to rename

mv buildroot-2019.08  buildroot-2019.08-x86_64

Repeat the 'unpack' and 'rename' steps if you want to build multiple configurations.

###2. Create Symlink to Site-Top

Clone site-top

NOTE: you need to clone the specific branch matching your buildroot release! The master branch is empty...

git clone -b br-2019.08 https://github.com/slaclab/buildroot-site site-top

Create symlink to site-specific config files, patches etc.

ln -s ../site-top buildroot-2019.08-x86_64/site

###3. Run SLAC prep helper script

Since 2015.02 a bash script was added which performs several steps that had to be done manually:

• apply buildroot patches (from site/br-patches/) A .stamp_br_patched flag-file is created after this step so that the script doesn't attempt to apply patches twice.
• Compile the buildroot config file from snippets (arch-specific and common/generic pieces) under site/config/.
• Convert the buildroot config file (which really is a 'defconfig', i.e., a list of settings that deviate from the defaults) to a full-blown config file (.config).
• Compile the linux kernel defconfig file from arch-specific and common/generic pieces under site/config/ to linux-<version>.config. (This is a 'defconfig'.)

First, change the working-directory into the buildroot source directory.

cd buildroot-2019.08-x86_64/   # or whatever you renamed the directory to

Note: this directory (i.e., the top-directory of the unpacked buildroot distribution) is often referred to as the 'buildroot top directory' in this text.

Then execute

site/scripts/br-installconf.sh -a <arch>

were is one of:

• zynq
• i686
• x86_64
• nanopi

Upon successful completion the script will install a .stamp_br_installconf flag-file which will prevent the script from executing again (can be overridden with a -f option).

Script options:

    -h: help
    -f: force    -- recompile config files 
    -p: no-patch -- do not apply buildroot patches (handy if you want to
                    'force' a reinstall of config files (e.g., for
                    different arch) but patches had been applied already.
    -d: dry-run  -- show what script would do (some steps are retraced,
                    i.e., files are restored).

###4. Build

Make sure your CWD is neither in PATH nor in LD_LIBRARY_PATH and issue

make

NOTE: if your main build machine has no access to the internet then you can use the following steps:

     1. log onto a machine *with* internet access.
     2. chdir to buildroot top (where buildroot .config file sits)
     3. type `make source` (this just downloads everything needed)
     4. log out, back into your build machine
     5. type `make`

####4.1. Output Products

Products generated by the build (kernel image, root-file system etc.) are in output/images/.

###5. Modifying the Configuration Files

This process is explained in a separate README.buildroot.modify_config file.

###6. Version Control

(Gzipped) copies of

• buildroot config file

• linux kernel config file

• busybox config file as well as the output of (cd site; git describe --always --dirty) which captures the state of the slac-specific configuration(s) are stored in the target's root filesystem under

  /etc/site/

The kernel configuration is the configuration effective when buildroot was compiled. This can be compared against the run-time kernel config information available at

/proc/config.gz