5.16.1. Setting up Effective Mirrors

As mentioned, a good deal that goes into a Yocto Project build is simply downloading all of the source tarballs. Maybe you have been working with another build system (OpenEmbedded or Angstrom) for which you have built up a sizable directory of source tarballs. Or, perhaps someone else has such a directory for which you have read access. If so, you can save time by adding statements to your configuration file so that the build process checks local directories first for existing tarballs before checking the Internet.

Here is an efficient way to set it up in your local.conf file:

     SOURCE_MIRROR_URL ?= "file:///home/you/your-download-dir/"
     INHERIT += "own-mirrors"
     BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS = "1"
     # BB_NO_NETWORK = "1"
                

In the previous example, the BB_GENERATE_MIRROR_TARBALLS variable causes the OpenEmbedded build system to generate tarballs of the Git repositories and store them in the DL_DIR directory. Due to performance reasons, generating and storing these tarballs is not the build system's default behavior.

You can also use the PREMIRRORS variable. For an example, see the variable's glossary entry in the Yocto Project Reference Manual.