How to get a buildroot project under source control

Question

The company I work for develops a product that requires embedded Linux for which we use, as many other, Buildroot.

In any case, I would like to get the project under sou

Answer 1

I've recently tackled the same problem in our organisation, and I find this an interesting topic. I'll describe our partial solution here:

Manage which buildroot version you use

EDIT: Recent experience has emphasized this point for me.

Buildroot writes a different config files for each version of Buildroot. To be able to share these you need to specify to everyone involved which version of Buildroot your repository uses.

1. You could include Buildroot as a git submodule in your repo. Ok, if your company only has one Buildroot project.
2. Specify in the README file which version to use, or write a custom check for it.

Building out-of-tree

I strongly recommend to build out of tree: http://buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#_building_out_of_tree

$ cd ~/platform/proj-arm; make O=$PWD -C path/to/buildroot

Add configuration files and target overlay to git

Add the .config file and sub-configuration files to the git repository. My repo contains the following:

.config
README.md
linux.config
build/busybox-1.22.1/.config
libdc1394.patch
opencv_2.3.1a.patch
target-overlay/README~
target-overlay/etc/dropbear/dropbear_ecdsa_host_key
target-overlay/etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key
target-overlay/etc/fstab
target-overlay/etc/httpd.conf
target-overlay/etc/init.d/S51mount_html
target-overlay/etc/init.d/S52new_ip_address
target-overlay/etc/init.d/S53httpd
target-overlay/etc/network/interfaces
target-overlay/etc/shadow
target-overlay/etc/sshd_config
target-overlay/lib/firmware/rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw
target-overlay/root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Save your changes to buildroot as patches

Whenever you change stuff in the buildroot repository, branch out for that feature, and create a patch for it. Keep the patch in your repository, and use the README.md file to explain to others how to apply it to the buildroot tree.