Re: [ptxdist] Yocto

["Schenk, Gavin" <G.Schenk@eckelmann.de>]

Hi,

> 
> yes I know the topic is blasphemy ;-)  but I was wondering if there are
> ppl that made usecase comparisons between ptxdist and Yocto? My personal
> experience with small systems (no GUI/X/wayland) is that ptxdist is
> really easy to get going. With large systems that need QT 5.9,
> webkitgtk/chromium, different OpenGL versions etc. is that ptxdist is
> not always that easy. But I am not experienced enough with Yocto to say
> if that will be easier/better.
> 
> So hence the question, anybody out there that tried both and picked
> ptxdist (or yocto) for a reason ?
> 

My company uses PTXDIST for quite some Years and we go very good with it! Thanks for this great tool.

In September 2016 I visited a Yocto workshop to have a look at it and build an opinion: Switch to Yocto, or stay with PTXDIST in the near future?

As a result I recommended to stick to PTXDIST, and have a look at Yocto from time to time because of the big community and its progress.

In September 2016 ( Maybe the information is a little outdated ) I noted:

PRO Yocto:
* Releasetrain every half year a new YOCTO. PTXDIST releases more often. Sometimes with only some bugfixes, sometimes major changes. Maybe a factor for planning stuff.
* Fully implemented in Python you can see/change everything. (Same concept in PTXDIST).
* Strict object-oriented design in the recipes.
* Licensing is part of the concept in Yocto. (Meanwhile PTXDIST support license reports, too)
* Documentation is extensive. (Meanwhile PTXDIST docu is getting better, too)
* Package based logfiles
* Reduce build time with state-caches (PTXDIST supports pre build packages, ccache and ICECREAM to reduce build time, too)
* In YOCTO you have free choice for package management (RPM, DEB, ipkg, opkg). That impressed me, as I remember.
  And the trend in PTXDIST is to manage and update the whole firmware using RAUC, right? 
* The build process splits up in tasks, and for every task YOCTO creates scripts that can be called manually. Useful for searching problems I guess. 
  (PTXDIST has its get, extract, prepare, compile, install, targetinstall stages)


CON Yocto:
* No nativ support for NFS boot (Maybe outdated?). The lecturer tried to sell it as an advantage, but I did not hear him ... I was in stage of shock.
* Strange in such a modern systems to build semantic on top of filenames (e.g. No '_' in package name because the must only be one '_' that separates name from version ...
* Changes in source (that must be marked see GPL...) are done in patchstacks (same in PTXDIST). 
  But there is even less support for this in Yocto than PTXDIST offers (git ptx-patches). 
  Everything has to be done manualy. For me THE big regress.
* No Tab-completition as PTXDIST offers it. 5 Stages, ~130packages and 100.000 commands. I think a very usefull feature in PTXDIST!
* The generic design of Yocto leaves you with a complicated, not really intuitive, folder structure. (Maybe a learning process)
* No graphical support, not even dialog based. In the lesson it seemed to me that you edit configfiles until the end of time...

Ok, so my conclusion was not 100% clear. Yocto is new, shiny, generic ... and not simple.

Hope my information is useful

Regards
Gavin Schenk


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