Kettle

Kettle is a build tool dedicated for complex multi platform projects that target embedded devices. In such projects, one typically develops on a Linux host machine, on which the project is also tested and debugged, and cross-compiles for an embedded device, on which the project finally shall run. A project thereby consists of several libraries, applications, and utilizes a meta build system of its own (e.g., Yocto or Buildroot).

To support development in this area, Kettle provides the following functionality:

same interface for building for the host system and the embedded device via a toolchain
easy to share build configuration files
configuration in a hiearchical system: global settings < platform specific settings < project specific settings
reproducability of environment setups for every build
janitor tasks like rebuilding

Local Configurations

Kettle ships a set of default build options for specific platforms, yet it does not provide build options for your specific projects. For those, you can put your local configurations into the subfilder local. There are two three types of configuration files:

local/platform/.cfg: such configurations override any configurations specified in conf/platform/.cfg
local/project/*.cfg: your local preject specific configurations
local/environment.cfg: your local environment setup
local/kettle.cfg: your local configurations for kettle

Configuration Options

Note that Kettle combines several configuration files for a single project build. Thereby, configuration files can override values from other files.

Project Configuration

Section "Environment"

any "variable=value" element in this section is exported as environment value

Section "Default

environmentScript: path to bash-script that sets environment variables (e.g. Yocto generated SDK environment setup script)

Section "Project"

vcs: git (currently only option)
vcsGitSubmodules: true/false, enables git submodule updates if vcs is Git
vcsUrl: url to resository
buildSystem: cmake (currently only option)
makeArguments: any list of arguments to be appended to the make call (eg. "-j4")
cmakeArguments: any list of arguments to be appended to the cmake call