Yocto Project lore: New mailing list tools
2021-12-01 , Room A

This short talk will present the new tools we can make use of now that the Yocto Project mailing list is mirrored to lore.kernel.org. The b4 tool will be introduced and a demo will be given of how this tool can be used to quickly apply patches from the mailing list to a local repository, show differences between patch versions and autogenerate thank you messages. The talk will also briefly touch on the patatt patch attestation tool which can be used to cryptographically sign patches sent via a mailing list.


Recently the Yocto Project & OpenEmbedded mailing lists have been added to the lore.kernel.org public-inbox server. This allows us to make use of new tools developed within the Linux kernel community to simplify the process of reviewing, testing and accepting patches submitted via mailing lists. This talk is presented in the hope that these tools can become more widely used within the Yocto Project community now that they are available, hopefully making life easier for maintainers!

See also: Slides (586.6 KB)

Paul Barker has been an active member of the OpenEmbedded & Yocto Project community since 2013. He has contributed to the project in many ways, including maintaining opkg in 2013-2015. More recent work has focused on Board Support Packages for several single board computers and core components such as the archiver.

As a Principal Software Engineer at SanCloud Ltd (UK), Paul is responsible for maintaining the Yocto Project BSP for SanCloud hardware, developing bespoke solutions for customers and representing SanCloud within the Automotive Grade Linux community. Paul previously worked as an Embedded Linux consultant with Konsulko (USA/Global) and Beta Five Ltd (UK) and before that he was responsible for the development and maintenance of Linux support at CommAgility Ltd, a manufacturer of telecomms test equipment.

Paul is a regular speaker at Yocto Project developer day and summit events, often speaking about license compliance tooling and best practices. He has also spoken at Linaro Virtual Connect 2020, Embedded Linux Conference 2019 and other conferences. Prior to working in Embedded Linux Paul was a research student studying underwater acoustics & underwater noise monitoring and presented research at several academic conferences.

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