Before I stop blogging once again here is a small status update.

BitBake now features a ‘-g’ option. bitbake -g world will generate a couple of directed graphs. Currently only depends.dot is complete. The above command will generate a complete dependency (build-time as in DEPENDS) graph for the world target. I have no image linked here as the dot is still generating the graph. In the future we will also generate a rdepends.dot and alldepends.dot graph. Both are pretty straight forward now that we can generate one sort of dependency graph. Sadly this feature is not too useful ATM due the OpenEmbedded base.bbclass as each package will depend on quilt-native, virtual/libc and the dependecies of them. This means we will have a lot of edges from nodes to the base dependencies. The solution currently in my mind is to add another option to inform BitBake to stop at a list of dependencies to avoid this situation.
The next step could involve tuning the output to hint dot to generate better graphs. Well we will see how this is evolving.

On the OpenEmbedded front, I won’t comment on the familiar split-up, I have added the NetworkBlockDevice (nbd) package. I deploy a nbd-server on my NSLu2 and have a nbd-client on my SHARK to add swap to the machine. I have finally cleaned up my desk a bit and moved the SHARK, NSLu2 and the PowerPC board, thanks again, away. They are now all plugged together and the NSlu2 will serve NFS to them. Obviously all these machines use OpenEmbedded to some degree or will use it in the future. They are all part of my secret QA plan.

On a private note I’m planning on getting a new desktop machine as mine is getting slower and slower. My currently preferred system is an Athlon X2 based one but I’m still considering if I ask for donations once again…