5.7.1. Enabling the Generation of Introspection Data

Enabling the generation of introspection data (GIR files) in your library package involves the following:

  1. Inherit the gobject-introspection class.

  2. Make sure introspection is not disabled anywhere in the recipe or from anything the recipe includes. Also, make sure that "gobject-introspection-data" is not in DISTRO_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED and that "qemu-usermode" is not in MACHINE_FEATURES_BACKFILL_CONSIDERED. If either of these conditions exist, nothing will happen.

  3. Try to build the recipe. If you encounter build errors that look like something is unable to find .so libraries, check where these libraries are located in the source tree and add the following to the recipe:

         GIR_EXTRA_LIBS_PATH = "${B}/something/.libs"
                            

    Note

    See recipes in the oe-core repository that use that GIR_EXTRA_LIBS_PATH variable as an example.

  4. Look for any other errors, which probably mean that introspection support in a package is not entirely standard, and thus breaks down in a cross-compilation environment. For such cases, custom-made fixes are needed. A good place to ask and receive help in these cases is the Yocto Project mailing lists.

Note

Using a library that no longer builds against the latest Yocto Project release and prints introspection related errors is a good candidate for the previous procedure.