5.3.21.5. Packaging Externally Produced Binaries

Sometimes, you need to add pre-compiled binaries to an image. For example, suppose that binaries for proprietary code exist, which are created by a particular division of a company. Your part of the company needs to use those binaries as part of an image that you are building using the OpenEmbedded build system. Since you only have the binaries and not the source code, you cannot use a typical recipe that expects to fetch the source specified in SRC_URI and then compile it.

One method is to package the binaries and then install them as part of the image. Generally, it is not a good idea to package binaries since, among other things, it can hinder the ability to reproduce builds and could lead to compatibility problems with ABI in the future. However, sometimes you have no choice.

The easiest solution is to create a recipe that uses the bin_package class and to be sure that you are using default locations for build artifacts. In most cases, the bin_package class handles "skipping" the configure and compile steps as well as sets things up to grab packages from the appropriate area. In particular, this class sets noexec on both the do_configure and do_compile tasks, sets FILES_${PN} to "/" so that it picks up all files, and sets up a do_install task, which effectively copies all files from ${S} to ${D}. The bin_package class works well when the files extracted into ${S} are already laid out in the way they should be laid out on the target. For more information on these variables, see the FILES, PN, S, and D variables in the Yocto Project Reference Manual's variable glossary.

Notes

  • Using DEPENDS is a good idea even for components distributed in binary form, and is often necessary for shared libraries. For a shared library, listing the library dependencies in DEPENDS makes sure that the libraries are available in the staging sysroot when other recipes link against the library, which might be necessary for successful linking.

  • Using DEPENDS also allows runtime dependencies between packages to be added automatically. See the "Automatically Added Runtime Dependencies" section in the Yocto Project Reference Manual for more information.

If you cannot use the bin_package class, you need to be sure you are doing the following: