U-Boot defconfig common configuration - config

I was in the middle of adding a new board to Yocto while I noticed that a lot of the configuration could be inherited from the previous hw revision.
So I was wondering if there could be the possibility of including a common_defconfig in the <new_board>_defconfig to not duplicate all the configuration files. Similarly to what happens with dts files.
E.g.
common_defconfig:
CONFIG_ARM=y
CONFIG_SPL=y
CONFIG_CMD_I2C=y
board_hw1_defconfig:
#include "common_defconfig"
CONFIG_TARGET_BOARD_HW1=y
board_hw2_defconfig:
#include "common_defconfig"
CONFIG_TARGET_BOARD_HW2=y
UPDATE 1
Like pointed out by #Xypron, and as I was suspecting, there is no way to include different _defconfig one in another.
I also tried to create a generic Kconfig.defconfig to select some configurations. The problem was that, for example, ARM is defined as a config inside a choice so cannot be selected from inside a Kconf file.
I will end up creating a do_configure_append task where I will merge the _defconfig files through the use of scripts/kconfig/merge_config.sh if no one will come with a better solution.

U-Boot inherits the build system from Linux. Neither of both support includes in _defconfig-files up to now. If you want it changed you need to come up with a patch for scripts/kconfig/Makefile scripts/kconfig/Makefile.
The configs/*defconfig files are seeding .config. So anyway most of the configuration comes from presets in the Kconfig files. This is different to the device trees where for ARM systems all values come from *.dts and *.dtsi files.

Related

Is is possible to pass a variable from the build process to Visual Basic code?

My goal is to create build definitions within Visual Studio Team Services for both test and production environments. I need to update 2 variables in my code which determine which database and which blob storage the environment uses. Up till now, I've juggled this value in a Resource variable, and pulled that value in code from My.Resources.DB for a library, and Microsoft.Azure.CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DatabaseConnectionString") for an Azure worker role. However, changing 4 variables every time I do a release is getting tiring.
I see a lot of posts that get close to what I want, but they're geared towards C#. For reasons beyond my influence, this project is written in VB.NET. It seems I have 2 options. First, I could call the MSBuild process with a couple of defined properties, passing them to the .metaproj build file, but I don't know how to get them to be used in VB code. That's preferable, but, at this point, I'm starting to doubt that this is possible.
I've been able to set some pre-processor constants, to be recognized in #If-#Else directives.
#If DEBUG = True Then
BarStaticItemVersion.Caption = String.Format("Version: {0}", "1.18.0.xxx")
#Else
BarStaticItemVersion.Caption = String.Format("Version: {0}", "1.18.0.133")
#End If
msbuild CalbertNG.sln.metaproj /t:Rebuild /p:DefineConstants="DEBUG=False"
This seems to work, though I need to Rebuild to change the value of that constant. Should I have to? Should Build be enough? Is this normal, or an indication that I don't have something set quite right?
I've seen other posts that talk about pre-processing the source files with some other builder, like Ant, but that seems like overkill. It feels like I'm close here. But I want to zoom out and ask, from a clean sheet of paper, if you're given 2 variables which need to change per environment, you're using VB.NET, and you want to incorporate those variable values in an automated VS Team Services build process upon code check-in, what's the best way to do it? (I want to define the variables in the VSTS panel, but this just passes them to my builder, so I have to know how to parse the call to MSBuild to make these useful.)
I can control picking between 2 static strings, now, via compiler directives, but I'd really like to reference the Build.BuildNumber that comes out of the MSBuild process to display to the user, and, if I can do that, I can just feed the variables for database and blob container via the same mechanism, and skip the pre-processor.
You've already found the way you can pass data from the MsBuild Arguments directly into the code. An alternative is to use the Condition Attribute in your project files to make certain property groups optional, it allows you to even include specific files conditionally. You can control conditions by passing in /p:ConditionalProperty=value on the MsBuild command. This at least ensures people use a set of values that make sense together.
The problem is that when MsBuild is running in Incremental mode it is likely to not process your changes (as you've noticed), the reason for this, is that the input files remain unchanged since the last build and are all older than the last generated output files.
To by-pass this behavior you'd normally create a separate solution configuration and override the output location for all projects to be unique for that configuration. Combined with setting the Compiler constants for that specific configuration you're ensured that when building that Configuration/Platform combination, incremental builds work as intended.
I do want to echo some of the comments from JerryM and Daniel Mann. Some items are better stored in else where or updated before you actually start the compile phase.
Possible solutions:
Store your configuration data in config files and use Configuration Transformation to generate the right config file base don the selected solution configuration. The process is explained on MSDN. To enable configuration transformation on all project types, you can use SlowCheetah.
Store your ocnfiguration data in the config files and use MsDeploy and specify a Parameters.xml file that matches the deploy package. It will perform the transformation on deploy time and will actually allow your solution to contain a standard config file you use at runtime, plus a publish profile which will post-process your configuration. You can use a SetParameters.xml file to override the variables at deploy time.
Create an installer project (such as through Wix) and merge the final configuration at install time (similar to the MsDeploy). You could even provide a UI which prompts for specific values (and can supply default values).
Use a CI server, like the new TFS/VSTS 2015 task based build engine and combine it with a task that can search&replace tokens, like the Replace Tokens task, Tokenization Task, Colin's ALM Corner Build and Release Tasks. And a whole bunch that specifically deal with versioning. Handling these things in the CI server also allows you to do a quick build locally at all times and do these relatively expensive steps on the build server (patching source code breaks incremental build in MsBuild, because there are always newer input files.
When talking specifically about versioning, there are a number of ways to set the AssemblyVersion and AssemblyFileVersion just before compile time, usually it involves overriding the AssemblyInfo.cs file before compilation. Your code could then use reflection to read the value at runtime. You can use the AssemblyInformationalversion to specify something like you do in the example above which contains .xxx or other text. It also ensures that the version displayed always reflects the information obtained when reading the file properties through Windows Explorer.

How to create a Wix patch in combination with Heat?

I'm developer on a big system (>100 Projects in Solution, >100 000 LOC, > 10 Services, ...) and did the installation of this system in the past with wix and it worked fine. Now I need a way to patch (Minor Upgrade) parts of the system and run into several issues.
My Current Wix Setup is as following:
I have VS2010 and Wix3.6 Toolset and TFS2012 to Build the whole thing and get an installer
I'm using a Setup Library Project Type per Service
I'm using exactly one Setup Project to bundle things together and get one installer for the whole system.
It's not possible to change this setup.
The Setup Library Projects are set up as following:
I use the heat-directory msbuild task to generate the components and files and I'm using preprocessor variables to modify the file paths.
I need to modify the file paths because it must be possible to build an installer on the local developer system and to build the installer on the tfs build system which is different in folder structures.
The TFS uses always the same directory to compile subsequent versions of the software and moves the output after successful compilation to a unique folder structure.
Now I need a patch.
I created the Patch.wxs and called candle and light for it. I called torch to get the difference file. And finally want to create the patch with pyro.
Everything worked fine with a simple testproject, but on the big system
Pyro has the problem that it can't find the files to install.
Through my setup (see above), I must use preprocessor variables and have a full qualified path in my wix output (for example: C:\builds\myproduct\prodct.exe as file source). After moving the TFS output to another location this path is not valid anymore. I tried to use -bt and -bu switches for pyro, but this does only work for relative paths or for named bindpaths.
Now I wanted to change my wix project setup to use named bindpaths rather than preprocessor variables, but it seems that this is not possible.
heat can only use preprocessor variables or wixvariables but it seems not to be possible to use bindpath variables. heat provides a switch -wixvar which should create binder variables instead of preprocessor variables but I does exactly nothing.
Now I tried do use no wix and no preprocessor variables in heat and tell light per -bu -bt switches where to find the files. But if I do not set a preprocessor variable the resulting files look like Sources\product.exe. I can't get rid of this Sources. I know that I can transform all the xml with xslt and remove the Sources but thats a workaround which I would only implement if no other solution is possible. This would also mean that there is a problem in the wix toolchain.
It looks like pyro does only support bindpath variables and heat does only support preprocessor and wix variables. This seems to be really crazy, because how should they work together?
How can I create a patch if I use lit, light, candle, heat, torch and pyro and if the original build paths have changed (which is very common on a build system) and the file paths are created with heat and therefore be fixed or preprocessor or wix variables?
As you've found heat wasn't designed to be used in the patching scenario. It was only in recent versions of the WiX toolset that the generated GUIDs got to a point where there was even a chance that heat could successfully build output that would be patchable. Still need to do work there to make patching where heat is used work well.
Ultimately, I believe the answer is to simplify the "original source" problem. It is challenging to get all the bindpaths set up correctly and that makes patching, which is a hard problem, even harder. We've kicked around a few ideas but nothing has come together yet.
You could always use admin image based patching. It's slower but can be easier to get the "original source" and "target" laid out. That path does lose filtering though.
Basically, we need to do a bit more work in patching scenarios to make it much easier.
PS: "Source" in the path for a File/#Source attribute is an alias for the "default bindpath". You can use bindpaths there.

How can I handle platform-specific modules in Go?

I'm writing a command-line utility in Go that (as part of its operation) needs to get a password from the user. There's a great gopass module for Unix that does this, and I know how to write one for the Windows console. The problem is that the Windows module obviously won't build on *nix, and the *nix version won't build on Windows. Since Go lacks any preprocessor support (as far as I can tell), I have absolutely no idea what the right way to approach this is. I know it's possible, since Go itself must do this for its own libraries, but the tooling I'm used to (conditional imports/preprocessors/etc.) seems to be missing.
Go has build constraints, which can either be specified as comments in a .go file, or as part of the file name.
One set of constraints is for target operating system, so you can have one file for Windows, one for e.g. Linux and implement the same function in two different ways in the two.
More information on build constraints are at http://golang.org/pkg/go/build/#hdr-Build_Constraints

Xcode search paths for public headers in dependencies

I am trying to clean up some of my projects, and one of the things that are puzzling me is how to deal with header files in static libraries that I have added as "project dependencies" (by adding the project file itself). The basic structure is like this:
MyProject.xcodeproj
Contrib
thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj
Classes
MyClass1.h
MyClass1.m
...
Now, the dependencies are all set up and built correctly, but how can I specify the public headers for "thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj" so that they are on the search path when building MyProject.xcodeproj. Right now, I have hard-coded the include directory in the thirdPartyLibrary.xcodeproj, but obviously this is clumsy and non-portable. I assume that, since the headers are public and already built to some temporary location in ~/Library (where the .a file goes as well), there is a neat way to reference this directory. Only.. how? An hour of Googling turned up blank, so any help is greatly appreciated!
If I understand correctly, I believe you want to add a path containing $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR) to the HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS in your projects build settings.
As an example, I took an existing iOS project which contains a static library, which is included just in the way you describe, and set the libraries header files to public. I also noted that the PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH for this project was set to "/usr/local/include" and these files are copied to $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include when the parent project builds the dependent project. So, the solution was to add $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include to HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS in my project's build settings.
HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS = $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/usr/local/include
Your situation may be slightly different but the exact path your looking for can probably be found in Xcode's build settings. Also you may find it helpful to add a Run Script build phase to your target and note the values of various settings at build time with something like:
echo "BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR " $BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR
echo "HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS " $HEADER_SEARCH_PATHS
echo "PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH " $PUBLIC_HEADERS_FOLDER_PATH
.
.
.
etc.
I think that your solution is sufficient and a generally accepted one. One alternative would be to have all header files located under an umbrella directory that can describe the interface to using the depended-on libraries and put that in your include path. I see this as being similar to /usr/include. Another alternative that I have never personally tried, but I think would work would be to create references to all the headers of thirdPartyLibrary from MyProject so that they appear to be members of the MyProject. You would do this by dragging them from some location into MyProject, and then deselecting the checkbox that says to copy them into the project's top level directory. From one perspective this seems feasible to me because it is as if you are explicitly declaring that your project depends on those specific classes, but it is not directly responsible for compiling them.
One of the things to be wary of when addressing this issue is depending on implementation-specific details of Xcode for locating libraries automatically. Doing so may seem innocuous in the meantime but the workflows that it uses to build projects are subject to change with updates and could potentially break your project in subtle and confusing ways. If they are not well-defined in some documentation, I would take any effect as being coincidental and not worth leveraging in your project when you can enforce the desired behavior by some other means. In the end, you may have to define a convention that you follow or find one that you adopt from someone else. By doing so, you can rest assured that if your solution is documented and reproducible, any developer (including yourself in the future) can pick it up and proceed without tripping over it, and that it will stand the testament of time.
The way we do it is to go into build target settings for the main project and add:
User Header Search Path = "Contrib"
and check that it searches recursively. We don't see performance problems with searching recursively even with many (10-15 in some projects) dependencies.

Difference between Debug and Release folders

Could you advise me what is the difference between Debug and Release folders?
Thanks
Furqan
The debug folder usually contains your program compiled for debugging, that is there is additional information included, such as variable names, that help you find errors in the program.
The release folder contains your program without any of that. Just what is necessary for the program to run.
Just to be clear, the name of the folders in your question are virtually unlimited (not simply limited to debug and release). Right click on your solution and select Configuration Manager and you can add as many configurations as you would like. The name of the configuration is the name of the folder.
As Joshua wrote, usually, people use their debug config to include things like the .pdb file (which includes debugging symbols needed to get line numbers from errors, etc.). Release is normally cleaner. However, you can easily setup folders for x86 vs. x64 vs. any cpu.
If you have a solution with 10 different projects (not uncommon if you work on something of decent size) you might want to build certain projects together and others together. In this case, you should create additional configurations to support this so you can build a group simply by changing your active configuration.
In the end, the folders you mentioned contain whatever you specify in the configuration manager that they should contain.