Re: [yocto] Dynamically load patch series from fetched repositories.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2025 at 16:16, Danik via lists.yoctoproject.org
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Let me know if you have a better proposition for the implementation flow
> I have presented, or if I have missed some already existing technology
> in the Yocto Project. Either my colleagues or I would be eager to
> contribute such a feature to the project.

I'd say any patch-related effort should encourage and support a strict
'upstream first' culture for making patches, and this feels like a
step in the opposite direction, or at best, something that can be
badly misused.

We've all seen the monstrous vendor kernels from hell, and other
private vendor forks which are modified in ways that are poorly
written, not documented and basically unsustainable. Even in the
example above the patches contain basically no documentation or commit
history of why any given patch was added (e.g. a link to an issue in a
ticket system or even a commit message), whether it should be sent
upstream or anything else that might help some poor developer (or
consultant) to understand anything about it.

That said, you probably want a 'pragmatic', 'practical' answer :) If
so, then one approach is to list both the original component and the
repo with patches one after another in SRC_URI, so they're both
unpacked into ${UNPACKDIR}. Then sandwich a bitbake task between patch
and configure that can apply patch files from the second component
into the first. Appending to SRC_URI and implementing the task can be
done in a class, and parametrized as needed with variables. Then
inherit the class and set the variables from a bbappend, or just write
the recipe directly that way.

Alex