When building OpenBMC . . . ?

[Bruce Mitchell]

Thank you Patrick!  Your #1 and #2 scenario are close to what we are attempt.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Williams [mailto:patrick at stwcx.xyz]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 1, 2020 05:24
> To: Bruce Mitchell
> Cc: openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org
> Subject: Re: When building OpenBMC . . . ?
> 
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 10:02:41PM +0000, Bruce Mitchell wrote:
> > When selecting Target hardware
> > https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc#3-target-your-hardware
> > to build for the is a tiogapass, now if I add a meta-phoenix/meta-
> tiogapass/conf  how does
> > 	source setup tiogapass build
> > know which tiogapass to build?
> 
> https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/blob/master/setup#L34
> 
> The setup script just does a wildcard, which means you'll get the
> alphabetically ordered machine.  In this case, you should get the meta-
> facebook one selected before the meta-phoenix (supposing they both
> exist).
> 
> > Or am I not supposed to choose a name (i.e. tiogapass in this example)
> > that is already in the list when I need to create a new meta-
> phoenix/meta-<machine>/conf?
> 
> The overwhelming preference seems to be to not make another
> configuration with the same machine, and as one of the maintainers of
> meta-facebook, I agree in this case.  But, this answer doesn't solve your
> underlying question.
> 
> I suspect you're going to make two kinds of changes:
>   1. Features you want to enable on Tiogapass that Facebook isn't
>      interested in.  (I would cover bmcweb 'branding' changes here
>      also).
>   2. Fixes and configuration due to features we haven't enabled yet or
>      fully vetted.
> 
> #2 should go into either meta-facebook (or the underlying code
> repository where the fix is needed).  These will be common for any
> tiogapass hardware, so lets keep it in the common location.
> 
> #1 should go into meta-phoenix.  You're likely the first one doing this, so
> we may need some experimentation on the best option.  I have two
> ideas (there are probably others):
> 
>   * Make an alternative tiogapass variant, like tiogapass-phoenix, which
>     ends up including all the common tiogapass code from meta-facebook.
> 
>   * Create a new distro type for phoenix, which enhances the underlying
>     openbmc distribution with your own branding tweaks.  You'd still
>     build meta-facebook/tiogapass but with a different distro flavor.
> 
> I believe IBM has experiemented with both of these approaches for
> witherspoon (see witherspoon-tacoma and
> meta-ibm/conf/distro/openbmc-witherspoon.conf) and might have
> some insight into what has worked well for them.
> 
> I'm more than willing to work with you and your team to help refactor
> meta-facebook/tiogapass in a way that makes it more condusive to what
> your team is interested in doing.  I suspect we'll need to create some
> additional bitbake '.inc' files and move some of the content we have in
> '.conf' to '.inc'.  Catch me here or on IRC as needed.
> 
> --
> Patrick Williams