How to Handle Dependencies Correctly

John Seghers jseghers at cequint.com
Wed Sep 5 23:44:21 CEST 2007


Jeff Rush wrote:
> Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> > It is simple. Rebuild task does not care about deps.
> 
> Thanks Marcin for the reply but I'm afraid I don't understand.  The
> rebuilding of task-base is necessary to incorporate changes in the
> DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS variable, right?  And use of that variable is the
> way you get additional
> packages added to your image.  So why would the proper way to add packages
> not utilize the dependency chain?  Is there another way I should be doing
> this?

I think the issue here is the difference between RDEPENDS and DEPENDS
variables.  When something is set in DEPENDS variables, it means that
package must be built by the .bb scripts before the dependent package is
built.  RDEPENDS means "I've got the package and it needs to be added to the
image"... a Runtime Dependency vs. a build dependency.

Hence, when you build the package manually, it gets included because the
package already exists, but just building the image won't build it
automatically.

That's my understanding--though it's likely imperfect.

I'm using an overlay style build myself, and not using the
DISTRO_EXTRA_RDEPENDS which I've seen others say is not the right way to add
packages to an image.

- John




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