5.14.4. Using Runtime Package Management

During a build, BitBake always transforms a recipe into one or more packages. For example, BitBake takes the bash recipe and currently produces the bash-dbg, bash-staticdev, bash-dev, bash-doc, bash-locale, and bash packages. Not all generated packages are included in an image.

In several situations, you might need to update, add, remove, or query the packages on a target device at runtime (i.e. without having to generate a new image). Examples of such situations include:

In all these situations, you have something similar to a more traditional Linux distribution in that in-field devices are able to receive pre-compiled packages from a server for installation or update. Being able to install these packages on a running, in-field device is what is termed "runtime package management".

In order to use runtime package management, you need a host/server machine that serves up the pre-compiled packages plus the required metadata. You also need package manipulation tools on the target. The build machine is a likely candidate to act as the server. However, that machine does not necessarily have to be the package server. The build machine could push its artifacts to another machine that acts as the server (e.g. Internet-facing).

A simple build that targets just one device produces more than one package database. In other words, the packages produced by a build are separated out into a couple of different package groupings based on criteria such as the target's CPU architecture, the target board, or the C library used on the target. For example, a build targeting the qemuarm device produces the following three package databases: all, armv5te, and qemuarm. If you wanted your qemuarm device to be aware of all the packages that were available to it, you would need to point it to each of these databases individually. In a similar way, a traditional Linux distribution usually is configured to be aware of a number of software repositories from which it retrieves packages.

Using runtime package management is completely optional and not required for a successful build or deployment in any way. But if you want to make use of runtime package management, you need to do a couple things above and beyond the basics. The remainder of this section describes what you need to do.