Bug 15280

Summary: bitbake -b ignores bbappend files
Product: [Build System, Metadata & Runtime] BitBake Reporter: Adrian <adrian.freihofer>
Component: bitbakeAssignee: Adrian <adrian.freihofer>
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE QA Contact:
Severity: minor    
Priority: Medium CC: poky.bs.watcher, poky.watcher, randy.macleod, ross.burton
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: 5.99   
Hardware: All   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: No (bug/feature does not impact docs)

Description Adrian 2023-11-15 22:17:09 UTC 
bitbake -b a-recipe

Parses only the bb file but does not parse bbappend files. This makes this quick bitbake mode more or less unusable.

This issue was found when working on https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-core/message/190731

To make the command even more useful a new option which allows to run only one task without the dependencies of the same recipe would be nice.

The -b mode prints a warning:
Buildfile specified, dependencies will not be handled. If this is not what you want, do not use -b / --buildfile.

This is probably no longer needed. All users are used to call bitbake without -b, I guess.
Also the documentation https://docs.yoctoproject.org/bitbake/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-intro.html#executing-a-task-against-a-single-recipe has a hint that this is not the standard option which should be used.
Comment 1 Randy MacLeod 2023-11-16 15:41:11 UTC 
Adrian, 

The append files didn't exist when -b was introduced.

This is not a commonly used option.
Comment 2 Ross Burton 2023-11-16 15:43:18 UTC 
I'm _really_ tempted to remove -b from bitbake entirely because it's got so many limitations, but I've a script that uses it :)
Comment 3 Adrian 2024-08-11 13:20:55 UTC 
The implementation of devtool ide-sdk, which was finally integrated into poky, does not use bitbake -b (https://git.yoctoproject.org/poky/tree/scripts/lib/devtool/ide_sdk.py#n799). From this point of view, the issue could now be closed.
Comment 4 Randy MacLeod 2024-09-10 19:05:37 UTC 
See Adrian's comment.