Support for external plugins/commands

[aunsbjerg]

I am working on a legacy-ish Yocto based project which does not use KAS but instead has a relatively extensive custom python script for setting up layers, calling bitbake and more. For the most part, KAS looks like a very good fit for the project and would simplify things greatly, but there is still some custom "stuff" that KAS does not handle.

So the question is: does KAS support registering custom plugins/commands without needing to make a custom version of KAS? Are there plans to add support for external plugins in the future?

Apologies in advance if this topic is already covered somewhere, I tried searching with various keywords but didn't come up with anything.

[jan-kiszka]

We indeed had such a discussions before, see https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/cK9_SSFWGJo/m/143MD65YLQAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer and then https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/-mkErYT51Ws/m/TEthGS9HBAAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer for concrete extension (rather than a generic plugin interface). None of this materialized so far, but you could derive challenges and concerns from this threads.

[fmoessbauer]

Some time ago I also sent a concrete proposal (including implementation) of the plugin concept: https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/zhfJHitEqY8/m/-hUcRMzrBAAJ (it looks like the archive misses some parts of the series, but I can resend if needed.)

The main challenge is still defining a stable API between core-kas and the plugins.

[jan-kiszka]

Right, forgot about that RFC:

• Patch 1: https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/Es3I7tCjqY8/m/nLI-H8zrBAAJ
• Patch 2: https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/-KOqSmWGlPE/m/2RVnNMzrBAAJ

[jan-kiszka]

Beside the stable API issue, the unsolved problem is how to add plugins to kas-container.

[aunsbjerg]

Thanks for the feedback to both of you, and apologies for not searching the mailing lists. At least now there is a reference in github as well.

I come from a low(ish)-level background and have worked with Zephyr RTOS for a while. They have the west tool which is (at least superficially) similar to KAS. west is also a meta tool that manages git modules through a manifest file and wraps the underlying build system in higher level calls. It supports extensions by default - I wonder if there is some inspiration to be gleaned from there?

I would love to contribute with something more tangible, but I will be AFK for the coming month so it will be a while.

[jan-kiszka]

Yeah, west is quite a bit like kas. But I don't think it has something like the kas container.

FWIW: https://groups.google.com/g/kas-devel/c/sZCAmqsxTn4/m/YqbSzMrDAQAJ