Planning move to Yocto Scarthgap

EasyOS 5.x is currently built with the Yocto/OpenEmbedded Kirkstone release packages; however, having to backport some dependency packages to compile later releases of some packages.

This upward movement of package versions is inexorable. It causes problems, as some packages we do need to keep updating, mainly for security reasons. Especially web browsers. I compile Chromium in OE; we had to backport libva, which saved the day for awhile. However, have now hit a brick wall:

https://github.com/OSSystems/meta-browser/issues/773

Looking at Yocto/OE release schedule, Kirkstone is an LTS release, supported until 2026. The next LTS will be Scarthgap, expected to be released in April 2024 and supported until 2028:

https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Releases

The git repositories do not yet have scarthgap branches, so I have downloaded master branches, and now experimenting compiling. So far so good. Will see if Chromium compiles.

Looking ahead, an alternative is to build Easy from packages of another distribution, such as Debian or Void. That option is always there, always an attraction as this endless struggle with compiling packages can be done away with. There are downsides of getting locked into some other distribution though.

Another alternative is to give up compiling the web browser, and only use the official generic x86_64 binary package provided by the browser developer.    

Tags: easy