Question about intended use cases for SDK install vs. sourcing build environment

Hello Yocto maintainers,

I have a question regarding the intended use cases for installing the SDK
generated via populate_sdk versus sourcing the build environment (e.g.
environment-setup-cortexa72-cortexa53-oe-linux).

While investigating a toolchain issue, we noticed that the set of
path-related environment variables added by installing the SDK differs from
the ones that are set when sourcing the build environment directly
(sourcing the build environment results in more path-related environment
variables).

In our case, our team never sources the build environment and relies
entirely on the generated SDK. This difference in environment setup
actually caused us some friction when writing a CMake wrapper around the
libgpiod library. We found that the build would succeed when sourcing the
environment, but not when using only the SDK, unless we provided additional
hints via a custom .cmake file.

This made us wonder what the intended division of responsibilities is
between these two workflows:

   -

   What use cases are expected to rely on sourcing the build environment?
   -

   What use cases are expected to rely purely on the installed SDK?
   -

   Are we making a mistake by not sourcing the environment every time?

I’d appreciate any clarification on the design intent here, and whether
relying exclusively on the SDK is considered a fully supported workflow for
native/CMake-based development.

Thanks in advance for your time and insights!

Best regards,

-- 


Delftechpark 22 

2628 XH, Delft

The Netherlandswww.qblox.com  
<http://www.qblox.com>


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