From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: by yocto-www.yoctoproject.org (Postfix, from userid 118) id 6ED58E00C49; Sun, 28 Feb 2016 16:17:27 -0800 (PST) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on yocto-www.yoctoproject.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 X-Spam-HAM-Report: * -1.9 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% * [score: 0.0000] * -5.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_HI RBL: Sender listed at http://www.dnswl.org/, high * trust * [192.55.52.88 listed in list.dnswl.org] Received: from mga01.intel.com (mga01.intel.com [192.55.52.88]) by yocto-www.yoctoproject.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CCFF2E00C31 for ; Sun, 28 Feb 2016 16:17:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from orsmga002.jf.intel.com ([10.7.209.21]) by fmsmga101.fm.intel.com with ESMTP; 28 Feb 2016 16:17:23 -0800 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.22,518,1449561600"; d="scan'208";a="923003643" Received: from gtan23-mobl3.gar.corp.intel.com (HELO peggleto-mobl.ger.corp.intel.com) ([10.255.165.53]) by orsmga002.jf.intel.com with ESMTP; 28 Feb 2016 16:17:19 -0800 From: Paul Eggleton To: yocto@yoctoproject.org Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:17:16 +1300 Message-ID: <3327973.x6IgOsuVxr@peggleto-mobl.ger.corp.intel.com> Organization: Intel Corporation User-Agent: KMail/4.14.10 (Linux/4.3.5-300.fc23.x86_64; KDE/4.14.17; x86_64; ; ) In-Reply-To: <2956615.y8hyrZheM7@peggleto-mobl.ger.corp.intel.com> References: <2956615.y8hyrZheM7@peggleto-mobl.ger.corp.intel.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Cc: Brian Avery , openembedded-architecture@lists.openembedded.org Subject: Standalone image writer X-BeenThere: yocto@yoctoproject.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.13 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion of all things Yocto Project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 Feb 2016 00:17:27 -0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (changing subject line so people don't miss this slight tangent) I'd almost completely forgotten, but the part of what we wrote for Hob to write images to a USB stick or SD card (bitbake/bin/image-writer) is actually a standalone application. There's not a lot to it - pick your image file and then the device you want to write it to; it has some logic in it to not let you accidentally write to devices that aren't USB sticks. A few points: - I'm not sure very many people know this tool exists, so it's likely it's not being widely used. Having said that it is a nice simple UI that does the job. - It shares some code with Hob, but mostly not the bits with code quality issues, though it is still GTK+ 2 based. - It doesn't support the advanced SD card writing functionality that has been implented within wic over the last few releases, which is pretty important for devices where a special partition layout is expected by the bootloader. - Toaster can't really have this functionality in it because it's web based and the web server might not be running locally, so writing to a local USB stick or SD card isn't going to be practical from there; about all it could do is provide instructions on how to write the image once you've downloaded it. - I believe there are other equivalent tools out there that various distros use for taking a downloadable ISO image and writing it to a USB stick. I haven't done a survey to find out if if any of them work in quite the same way; I know some of them actually unpack the image and then re-create a filesystem on the device, which isn't the right thing for our images. - We do have a command-line equivalent in the form of scripts/contrib/ddimage in OE-Core. Of course it's command-line and thus less friendly but it does the job (and also has some safeguards against writing to the wrong device). So what do we do with this? We have two choices really: A) Drop bitbake/bin/imagewriter along with Hob; we could potentially resurrect it again later if desired B) Preserve it along with the shared modules that it requires Thoughts? Cheers, Paul -- Paul Eggleton Intel Open Source Technology Centre