Most of this page is deprecated by now, because OpenEmbedded switched from bitkeeper to monotone and from oemake to bitbake.

These are notes I took as I slowly climbed the OE/BK learning curve.
Feel free to clarify/correct anything as this is just a starting point.

Note that this page uses building OpenSlug as the worked example, whereas the GettingStarted guide uses building Unslung the worked example. Hence the two pages differ for a good reason.

The initial repo clone (from your OE root):

        bk clone bk://nslu2-linux.bkbits.net/packages
        bk clone bk://nslu2-linux.bkbits.net/oe
        bk clone bk://nslu2-linux.bkbits.net/nslu2-package-symlinks

To print or change BK parent

        bk parent

To pull in all the latest changes(from within oe/packages folder:

        bk pull; bk -r co -q

To undo the most recent pull:

        bk unpull

To make a package(s):

        oemake <package(s)>

To clean a package(s):

        oemake -c clean <package(s)>
        ex: oemake -c clean uclibc

To build a complete openslug flash image:

        oemake openslug-image (assuming you are building openslug)
        (Resulting image is in $OEBUILD/tmp/deploy/images/)
        (!!!!! Note that all subsequent oemake commands have to
          be run from within the build/ directory !!!!!.)

To extract the kernel and ramdisk files from the final bootstrap-image file
(from within the $OEBUILD/tmp/deploy/images/):

        splitnslu unpack openslug-image-nslu2-???

To make a file editable (IMPORTANT!):

        bk edit <file>
        <editor> <file>
        or
        bk editor <file> (uses your $EDITOR)

To undo a changeset:

        bk undo

To undo a local change to a file:

        bk unedit
        or
        use the 'discard' option of bk citool

To unlock a file:

        bk unlock

To create/commit a changeset (GUI):

        bk citool

To create a changeset: (command-line)

        bk ci <each modified file>
        bk add <each new file>
        bk commit -y"comments"

To send a changeset to mailing list for peer review:

        bk changes (to obtain changeset#)
        bk send -r <changeset#> nslu-changesets@lists.sf.net

To push up all new changesets to parent:

        bk parent bk://nslu2-linux@nslu2-linux.bkbits.net/openembedded (to use SSH, which requires write access)
        bk push

To receive and apply a changeset received by mail:

        bk receive < <changeset email file>
        bk resolve

To review changesets:

        bk csets

Revision Tool:

        bk revtool (then open the file in question)

Creating a patch:

        diff -urNd oldtree/ newtree/ > patch

Add a patch to a package:

        add a "file://blahblah.patch;patch=1" entry to the package's SRC_URI.

Listing locally modified files:

        bk sfiles -c   shows local modifications (as does bk -r diffs -u, since
                             it shows diffs of all files against the repo but is horribly slow)
        bk sfiles -pC (and bk pending) shows changes that have been checked
                              in, but not yet included in a changeset
        bk sfiles -x   shows files that are in the repository but not yet
                             controlled by bk (handy to make sure you didnt forget to
                             bk add all the patches from a build)
        bk sfiles -c | bk diffs -u -

Showing the content of the PN variables of a package .oe file:

        oebuild showdata <path_to_package_oe_file> | grep PN.*=

Forcing a package to retrieve a specific snapshot:

        Add "CVSDATE_<package_name> = <YYYYMMDD>" to the appropriate configuration file (ex: conf/local.conf)

Flashing final image to NSLU2 using Redboot (requires serial/telnet access):

        from host shell:
        splitnslu unpack <oe produced image from build/tmp/deploy/images/>

        from RedBoot prompt:
        ip_address -l 192.168.2.77 -h 192.168.2.1
        load -r -v -b 0x1000000 <tftp_path>/ramdisk.gz
        load -r -v -b 0x1d00000 <tftp_path>/vmlinuz
        exec 0x1d00000

======================================

Important files:

        $OEBUILD/conf:
                -local.conf

        $OEROOT/packages/meta/:
                - bootstrap-image.oe
                - task-bootstrap.oe
                - openslug-image.oe
                - unslung-*.oe


        $OEROOT/packages/conf/distro/:
                - openslug.conf

        $OEROOT/packages/conf/machine/:
                - nslu2.conf

        $OEROOT/packages/ipkg:


        $OEROOT/packages/files:
                - device_table*

        $OEROOT/packages/classes:
                - nslu2_flashimg.oeclass
                - kernel.oeclass

        $OEROOT/packages/base-files:
                - nslu2/fstab
                - etc/host.conf
                - etc/nsswitch.conf

        $OEROOT/packages/linux/:
                - nslu2-openslug_2.6.7.oe

        $OEROOT/packages/linux/nslu2-openslug-2.6.7:
                - defconfig (contains the linux kernel config settings!!!!)
                - various patches