We’re pleased to announce the release of Poky version 3.3 (Green).

Poky is aiming to release on a regular 6 month cycle so this release follows the 3.2 release approximately six months ago.

This release includes a lot of changes:

Updated toolchain:
- autoconf 2.6.5
- automake 1.11.1
- binutils 2.20
- bison 2.3
- gcc 4.3.3
- gdb 6.8
- glibc 2.9
- libtool 2.2.6
- pkgconfig 0.23

We now provide QEMU 0.12.4 (including the Poky enhancement to enable running GL apps in the emulator using a passthrough to the host GL)

Linux kernel updated to 2.6.33.2 for all QEMU machines and netbook

Recent X.org stack including X server 1.7.99.2

Busybox updated to 1.15.3

Many other new recipes and updated recipe versions

Basic support for PowerPC and MIPS machines, including qemumips and qemuppc machine configurations

Updated version of Bitbake which includes many enhancements:
- layers, a new method for maintaining extensions to the Poky metadata (see the Handbook Chapter 3 section 4.1 on Bitbake Layers)
- a switch to the 1.10 client/server branch allowing custom UIs such as the dependency visualisation UI ‘bitbake some-package -g -u depexp’
- enhanced mirror support, including ability to use local (file://) mirrors (whereby files will be used directly from the file location rather than copied to DL_DIR)
- speed enhancements

Use of BBCLASSEXTEND to provide native, cross, etc. packages using the same recipe as the host build

A class to add the correct gettext dependency to your package, regardless of build-type (cross, native, etc). This is particularly useful with the BBCLASSEXTEND variable.

Kernel class updated to handle changes in recent linux kernels

Packaged staging enhancements:
- support for pulling staging packages from a mirror (see the PSTAGE_MIRROR variable in your local.conf)
- post-processing of binaries with chrpath to make them relocatable
- removal of all legacy staging functions leading to improved build quality and faster builds
- note: packaged staging packages will now live in ${OEROOT}/pstage unless you set the PSTAGE_DIR variable in your local.conf

There have been some directory structure changes:
- the staging directory has been renamed to sysroots
- the cross directory has been removed and cross packages are now installed into the native sysroot
- the pstage toplevel directory has been created to house staging packages now that they are less tied to the build system

Various fixes for building on modern distributions (tested on Ubuntu and Fedora x86 and x86_64)

*NOTE*: We have changed the format of various configuration files and therefore added an compatibility check of files in build/conf - if using old configuration files you’ll want to be sure to check the .sample files in the build/conf directory and ensure your configuration files match.

Finally we’ve updated the Poky Handbook to include documentation for all of the changes made during this cycle.