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<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">
<chapter id="user-manual-intro">
<title>BitBake User Manual</title>
<section id="intro">
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>At it's core, BitBake is a generic task execution engine
allowing shell and python tasks to be run efficiently and in
parallel while working within complex inter-task dependency
constraints.
One of it's main users, OpenEmbedded, takes this core and
builds embedded Linux software stacks using a task oriented
approach.
Conceptually, BitBake is similar to GNU Make in some regards but
has significant differences.
BitBake executes tasks based upon metadata provided to it that
build up tasks.
It includes a fetcher library for obtaining source code from
various places such as source control systems or websites.
Metadata is stored in recipe (.bb), configuration (.conf), and
class (.bbclass) files and provide to BitBake the instructions
about which tasks to run and the dependencies between them.
The instructions for each unit to be built (e.g. a piece of
software) are known as recipe files and contain all the
information about the unit (dependencies, source file locations,
checksums, description and so on).
BitBake includes a client/server abstraction and can be used from
a commandline or as a service over XMLRPC and has several
different user interfaces.
</para>
</section>
<section id="history-and-goals">
<title>History and Goals</title>
<para>BitBake was originally a part of the OpenEmbedded project.
It was inspired by the Portage package management system used by
the Gentoo Linux distribution.
On December 7, 2004, OpenEmbedded project team member, Chris
Larson split the project into two distinct pieces:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>BitBake, a generic task executor</listitem>
<listitem>OpenEmbedded, a metadata set utilized by BitBake.</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
Today, BitBake is the primary basis of the
<ulink url="http://www.openembedded.org/"> OpenEmbedded</ulink>
project, which is being used to build and
maintain a number of projects and embedded Linux distributions such as the
Angstrom Distribution and the Yocto Project.
</para>
<para>Prior to BitBake, no other build tool adequately met the needs of an
aspiring embedded Linux distribution.
All of the buildsystems used by traditional desktop Linux
distributions lacked important functionality, and none of the
ad-hoc <emphasis>buildroot</emphasis> systems, prevalent in the
embedded space, were scalable or maintainable.
</para>
<para>Some important original goals for BitBake were:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Handle crosscompilation.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Handle interpackage dependencies (build time on target
architecture, build time on native architecture, and
runtime).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Support running any number of tasks within a given package,
including, but not limited to, fetching upstream sources,
unpacking them, patching them, configuring them, etc.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Must be Linux distribution agnostic (both build and target).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Must be architecture agnostic
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Must support multiple build and target operating systems
(including Cygwin, the BSDs, etc).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Must be able to be self contained, rather than tightly
integrated into the build machine's root filesystem.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>There must be a way to handle conditional metadata (on
target architecture, operating system, distribution,
machine).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>It must be easy for the person using the tools to supply
their own local metadata and packages to operate against.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Must make it easy to collaborate between multiple projects
using BitBake for their builds.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Should provide an inheritance mechanism to share common
metadata between many packages.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist></para>
<para>Over time it has become apparent that some further
requirements were necessary:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Handle variants of a base recipe (native, sdk,
multilib).
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Able to split metadata into layers and allow
layers to override each other.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Allow representation of a given set of input
variables to a task as a checksum.
Based on that checksum, allow accelleration
of builds with prebuilt components.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>BitBake satisfies all the original requirements and many
more with extensions being made to the basic functionality to
reflect the additionl requirements.
Flexibility and power have always been the priorities.
It is highly extensible, supporting embedded Python code and
execution of any arbitrary tasks.
</para>
</section>
<section id="Concepts">
<title>Concepts</title>
<para>BitBake is a program written in the Python language.
At the highest level, BitBake interprets metadata,
decides what tasks are required to run, and executes
those tasks.
Similar to GNU Make, BitBake controls how software is
built.
GNU Make does this using "makefiles".
BitBake uses "recipes".
BitBake extends the capabilities of a simple tool like
GNU Make by allowing for much more complex tasks to be
completed, such as assembling entire embedded Linux
distributions.
Several concepts must be understood to be able to leverage
the power of the tool.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Recipes</title>
<para>A BitBake Recipe, denoted by the file extension .bb is
the most basic metadata file.
For example, in OpenEmbedded recipes tell BitBake:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>Descriptive information about the
package.
</listitem>
<listitem>The version of the recipe.
</listitem>
<listitem>If there are any dependencies.
</listitem>
<listitem>Where the source code resides.
</listitem>
<listitem>Whether the source code requires
any patches.</listitem>
<listitem>How to compile the source code.
</listitem>
<listitem>Where to install the package
being compiled on the target
machine.</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>Within the context of BitBake, or any project utilizing
BitBake as it's build system, files with the .bb extension
are referred to as recipes.
The term "package" is also commonly used to describe
recipes.
However, since the same word is used to describe packaged
output from a project, it is best to maintain a single
descriptive term, "recipes".
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Configuration Files</title>
<para>Configuration Files, denoted by the .conf extension
define various configuration variables that govern the
project build process.
These files fall into several areas that define machine
configuration options, distribution configuration options,
compiler tuning options, general common configuration
options and user configuration options.
The main configuration file is the sample bitbake.conf
file, located within the bitbake source tree /conf
directory.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Classes</title>
<para>Class files, denoted by the .bbclass extension contain
information that is useful to share between metadata files.
The BitBake source tree comes with one class metadata file
currently, called base.bbclass and it is found in the
/classes directory.
The base.bbclass is special in that any new classes that
a developer adds to a project is required to inherit it
automatically.
This class contains definitions for standard basic tasks
such as fetching, unpacking, configuring (empty by
default), compiling (runs any Makefile present), installing
(empty by default) and packaging (empty by default).
These classes are often overridden or extended by other
classes added during the project development process.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Obtaining BitBake</title>
<para>There are several ways to obtain BitBake.
These include installing using your Linux distribution's
package management systemi (not recommended), downloading
a snapshot from the BitBake source code repository, or
using Git to clone the BitBake source code repository.
The recommended method for daily BitBake use is to
download a stable release from the BitBake source code
repository.
Using your distribution's version as provided inthe package
management system is generally not recommended as in most
cases, such as with the Ubuntu and Fedora distributions,
the version provided is several releases behind the
repository snapshot version and is missing important bug
fixes and enhancements.
Similarly, daily use of the latest clone of the Git
repository is not recommended as it can be unstable.
However, the Git repository clone will provide the
User with the absolute latest version of BitBake.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Downloading a Snapshot from the BitBake Source Tree</title>
<para>The recommended method for obtaining and using BitBake on a
daily basis is to download the most recent stable snapshot
from the Git source code repository as follows:
<screen>$ wget http://git.openembedded.org/bitbake/snapshot/bitbake-1.17.0.tar.gz
$ tar zxpvf bitbake-1.17.0.tar.gz
</screen>
After extraction of the tarball using the tar utility, you
will have a directory entitled
<emphasis>bitbake-1.17.0
</emphasis>.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Cloning the BitBake Git Repository</title>
<para>To obtain the latest BitBake source code from the BitBake
Git repository:
<screen>$ git clone git://git.openembedded.org/bitbake
</screen>
This will clone the BitBake Git repository into a directory
called <emphasis>bitbake</emphasis>.
Alternatively, you can designate a directory after the git
clone command if you'd prefer to call the new directory
something other than <emphasis>bitbake</emphasis>.
For example:
<screen>$ git clone git://git.openembedded.org/bitbake
bbdev
</screen>
This would clone the Git repository into a local directory
called <emphasis>bbdev</emphasis>.
Please note that although this method of obtaining the
source code will provide the absolute latest version, it is
under active development and may not be as stable as a
released snapshot.
</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Summary</title>
<para>At this point you should have a general idea of the concepts that
BitBake was built on and how the source code is organized.
You should have a working version of BitBake installed and
understand how to setup your environment.
</para>
<para>In the next chapter, a simple Hello World example is used to
demonstrate the BitBake concepts.</para>
</section>
</chapter>
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