create symbolic link in bitbake recipe

Question

I have a .bbappend recipe that I need to create a symbolic link in my system.

This is how it looks like now:

bernardo@bernardo-ThinkCentre-Edge72:~/y         


        

Answer 1

You can do:

ln -s ../lib/ld-2.26.so ${D}/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2

or if you don't require the symbolic-link until after your target system has booted up (i.e. it's not a dependency of other packages you are building) you can also do:

ln -s /lib/ld-2.26.so ${D}/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2

ln doesn't care if your target is valid or exists when a symbolic-link is created. It will become valid after you boot your target-system (or somehow mount this filesystem to /). But indeed, relative links are recommended.

Answer 2

The cleanest solution is to use the "-r" flag:

do_install_append() {
    install -d ${D}/lib64
    ln -s -r ${D}/lib/ld-2.26.so ${D}/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 
}

From the gnu ln man page:

       -r, --relative            create symbolic links relative to link location

Answer 3

do_install_append () {
install -d 0755 ${D}/dir
install -d 0755 ${D}/dir/subdir
cd ${D}/dir/subdir
ln -sf /source_so_the_symbilic_link <name_of_the_symbolic_link>

} FILES_${PN} += "/dir"

Answer 4

Since Yocto 2.3, lnr is recommended.

e.g.

do_install_append() {
    install -d ${D}/lib64
    lnr ${D}/lib/ld-2.26.so ${D}/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 
}

Alternatively, you can also inherit relative_symlinks which will turn any absolute symlinks into relative ones, but this is less commonly used than lnr.

Cf. https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#migration-2.3-absolute-symlinks

Answer 5

Try to avoid usage of absolute paths:

do_install_append() {
    install -d ${D}/lib64
    cd ${D}/lib64
    ln -s ../lib/ld-2.26.so ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 
}

Answer 6

I had a look at how other recipes create links in the rootfs, and most seem to do it this way:

ln -sf /data/etc/bluetooth/main.conf ${D}/${sysconfdir}/bluetooth/main.conf

This command in the recipe will create the following link on the device:

/# ls -al /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 29 Sep 11 15:34 /etc/bluetooth/main.conf -> /data/etc/bluetooth/main.conf

You use the full, Yocto-generated path when creating the link, but you make it point to the "final" location in the rootfs.

This way you can use "absolute" paths and won't have to change the working directory in the recipe.