OpenWrt Feeds

In OpenWrt, a "feed" is a collection of packages which share a common location. Feeds may reside on a remote server, in a versioncontrol system, on the local filesystem, or in any other location addressable by a single name (path/URL) over a protocol with asupported feed method.

Feeds are additional predefined package build recipes for OpenWrt Buildroot.

Working with Feeds

Feed Configuration

The list of usable feeds is configured from the feeds.conf file (or feeds.conf.default when feeds.conf does not

exist). This file contains a list of feeds, one per line, and any number of empty lines. Comments begin with # and extend to the endof a line and are ignored during parsing. Each feed line consists of 3 whitespace-separated components: The feed method, the feedname, and the feed source.

As of this writing the file <builroot dir>/feeds.conf.default contains:

src-svn packages svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/packages

src-svn xwrt http://x-wrt.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/package

src-git luci git://nbd.name/luci.git

src-git routing git://github.com/openwrt-routing/packages.git

src-git telephony http://feeds.openwrt.nanl.de/openwrt/telephony.git

#src-svn phone svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/phone

#src-svn efl svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/efl

#src-svn xorg svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/xorg

#src-svn desktop svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/desktop

#src-svn xfce svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/xfce

#src-svn lxde svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/feeds/lxde

#src-link custom /usr/src/openwrt/custom-feed

As of this writing, the following methods are supported:

Method Function

src-bzr Data is downloaded from the source path/URL using bzr

src-cpy Data is copied from the source path

src-darcs Data is downloaded from the source path/URL using darcs

src-git Data is downloaded from the source path/URL using git. 1)

src-hg Data is downloaded from the source path/URL using hg

src-link A symlink to the source path is created

src-svn Data is downloaded from the source path/URL using svn

Feed names are used to identify feeds and serve as the basis for several file and directory names that are created to hold informationabout the feeds. The feed source is the location from which the feed data is downloaded.

For the methods listed above which rely on version control systems that support a "limited history" option (such as –depth for gitand –lightweight for bzr) the smallest available history is downloaded. This is a good default, but developers who are actively

committing to a feed and/or using the commit history may want to change this behavior. This can be done by editing

scripts/feeds appropriately or by checking out the feed without using scripts/feeds.

Feed Commands

Feeds can be utilized through the scripts/feeds script. A list of the available commands is generated by invoking

scripts/feeds without any arguments. Most commands require the feed information to be available locally, so running update

first is usually necessary. In the following discussion the term "applicable packages" usually refers to the package names given on thecommand line or all packages in a feed when the -a option is used.

Clean

The clean command removes the locally stored feed data, including the feed indexes and data for all packages in the feed (but notthe symlinks created by the install command, which will be dangling until the feeds are re-downloaded by the update command). This

is done by removing the feeds directory and all subdirectories.

Install

The install command installs the applicable packages and any packages on which the applicable packages depend (both directdependencies and build dependencies). The installation process consists of creating a symbolic link from

packages/feeds/$feed_name/$package_name to feeds/$feed_name/$package_name so that the package will

be included in the configuration process when the directory hierarchy under packages is searched.

Command Description

./scripts/feeds install -a Install all packages (not recommended, only install the packages you need)

./scripts/feeds install luci Install only the package LuCI

./scripts/feeds install -a -p luci Install the complete LuCI WebUI by installing all (-a) packages from the preferred feed (-p) luci

See the above section for a list of the feeds available by default.

Please note that this replaces the old method of creating symlinks, which can be still found on-line in many old forum and user-group entries

List

The list command reads and displays the list of packages in each feed from the index file for the applicable feeds. The index file is

stored in the feeds directory with the name of the feed suffixed with .index. The file is generated by the update command.

Search

The search command reads through the feed metadata and lists packages which match the given search criteria.

Uninstall

The uninstall command does the opposite of the install command (although it does not address dependent packages in any way). It

simply removes any symlinks to the package from the subdirectories of packages/feeds.

Update

When scripts/feeds update is invoked, each of the applicable feeds are downloaded from their source location into a

subdirectory of feeds with the feed name. It then parses the package information from the feed into an index file used by the list

and search commands.

Command Description

./scripts/feeds update packages luci Checkout the packages and luci feeds

Note that update also stores the configured location of the feed in feeds/$feed_name.tmp/location such that changes to

the configuration can be detected and handled appropriately.

After retrieval the downloaded packages need to be "installed". Only after installation will they be available in the configurationinterface!

Custom Feeds

Ok, you've developed your package, and now you want to use it via make menuconfig, OR you are developing a package and youwant to test it in a build before you try to get it included in OpenWrt.

The solution is a custom feed. You can either create an entirely new feed, or use a modified version of one of the standard ones.

Creating the package directory

Adding your package to an existing feed

For this example we assume that your are in /home/user/openwrt as your base directory.

1. You create your current project dir project.

1. Then while in /home/user/openwrt/project

1. svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk [svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/trunk] openwrt (for

the OpenWRT base system)

2. svn co svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/packages [svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/packages] packages

(for the packages feed)

1. Add your package in the appropriate subdirectory under /home/user/openwrt/project/packages

Creating your own feed

1. Create your project dir and get trunk, as above

2. Create your package dir and copy your package into it (e.g.

cp packagedir /home/user/openwrt/project/customfeed/), so that your package is under (in this example)

/home/user/openwrt/project/customfeed/packagedir

Using the feed

1. Edit your feeds.conf (i.e. /home/user/openwrt/project/openwrt/feeds.conf)

2. Add a new line to access the feed (and in the case of adding to the packages feed comment out the normal packages feed.)

3. e.g.

#srv-svn packages svn://svn.openwrt.org/openwrt/packagessrc-link customfeed /home/user/openwrt/project/packages

or in the case of the second example:

src-link customfeed /home/user/openwrt/project/customfeed

1. Update the feed: from the <buildroot dir> (e.g. /home/user/openwrt/project/openwrt) do:

./scripts/feeds update customfeed

2. And then install it

./scripts/feeds install -p customfeed

3. Now your package(s) should be available when you do

make menuconfig

Explanations

The downloaded sources (referenced in package Makefiles) are not there… The downloads go first to <buildroot>/dl as gzipped .gzfiles. And there they are stored and then they get unzipped to /build_dir. See e.g. <buildroot>/build_dir/target-*/ and below it youwill find subdirectories for each package's sources.

Documentation

1. OpenWrt Buildroot – About

2. OpenWrt Buildroot – Installation

3. OpenWrt Buildroot – Usage

4. OpenWrt Buildroot – Feeds

5. OpenWrt Buildroot – Technical Reference this article needs your attention.

Link dump

https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=45293 [https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=45293] exFAT support

1) If the source contains a semicolon, the portion before the semicolon is treated as a URL and the portion after as a branch name.

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doc/devel/feeds.txt · Last modified: 2013/07/16 19:16 by lorema

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