# Kirkstone branches? **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussions\ **Tags:** kirkstone\ **Created:** [March 18, 2022, 7:17pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764 "2022-03-18T19:17:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 7:17pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/1 "2022-03-18T19:17:58Z")
The `master` branches in the `poky` and `meta-openembedded` layers currently are being prepared for the `kirkstone` LTS release. Many BSP layers already track these branches on their own `master` branches. For my current project, only the Mender layers lack support for this new release, so… when can we expect new branches? If the release plans and schedule will not be made available publicly, can your commercial customers obtain this information? These details are critical for determining timelines and resource allocations. Starting with `dunfell`, I read that Mender will only support LTS releases. For devices already in production, updating from one LTS release to the next will require weeks (if not months) of integration and testing, as that process requires catching up with two years of upstream development. Obviously, I would like to start that process as soon as possible, if only because I expect to contribute improvements/fixes for my target in the `meta-mender-community` repository (which could add additional weeks/months). I imagine other developers find themselves in a similar situation and are frustrated with the lack of a clear roadmap. If it will be months before Mender layers become available for `kirkstone`, then I need to find another path forward that avoids blocking on this feature, even if that means removing mender support during initial development of my board layers. In the future, I hope Mender will prioritize development for new LTS releases to avoid delaying adoption by your customers. ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 8:17pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/2 "2022-03-18T20:17:50Z")
Hi @zach-welch-aquabyte! As of now, the `master-next` branch of `meta-mender` has preliminary support for `kirkstone`. This should not be considered production-ready, but should certainly give you a quick start already.😀 For a timeline, stable support for `kirkstone` will be available shortly after the official Yocto release. The `meta-mender-community` repository is a different beast, though. As you probably noticed, most of the supported boards are tied to a specific BSP version and not exactly following the release branches. For adding your target there, I’ll put it like that: “we’ll make it work”. Whenever you are ready to submit something and the release you want to target doesn’t have corresponding branch yet, ping me and I’ll set it up. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 8:29pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/3 "2022-03-18T20:29:20Z")
Thank you for the prompt and thorough reply. I will try out the `master-next` branch early next week. My initial investigation let me know that I will run into problems with the community-supported layer for my target. Presently, that repo does not have a `master` or `master-next` branch, so it will require some broad patches to bring it up to date (e.g. override syntax, variable renaming, and other scripted transformations). Can I talk y’all into running those scripts and pushing them to an interim `kirkstone-next` branch for subsequent community development efforts? I imagine any such foundational work would be a welcomed by everyone with projects using that repository. ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 8:34pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/4 "2022-03-18T20:34:27Z")
Hi @zach-welch-aquabyte, yes right the variable renames. Hm. Actually I don’t feel good about refactoring board supports that are bound to be broken then, just for the sake of syntax compatibility. I fear that this raises very wrong expectations. Another idea. Does your target rely on anything already in there? If not, then I could give you an empty `kirkstone-contrib` or such branch as a PR target. If yes, then we would better only adapt the pieces that actually have a chance of being functional. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/5 "2022-03-18T20:51:04Z")
We do use one of the existing layers in the community repository; an empty branch would break history continuity, so may I suggest a different strategy: 1. Fork the current `dunfell` branch to `kirkstone` 2. Run all required automatic conversions on the new branch, 3. Add a `bbfatal` statement in each `layer.conf` that explains the need to update it, 4. Include in that statement a clear deadline for such work to be done, 5. When the deadline arrives, drop all of the BSPs that never got updated. ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2022, 9:08pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/6 "2022-03-18T21:08:42Z")
Hi @zach-welch-aquabyte That sounds like a good plan. I will hopefully be able to do so next week. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2022, 10:43am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/7 "2022-03-22T10:43:25Z")
Hi @zach-welch-aquabyte! The branch is prepared at [https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community/tree/kirkstone-next](https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender-community/tree/kirkstone-next). It’s mostly locked down via `bb.fatal` at the moment, and I will ping maintainers to look into it soon. If anything else is blocking you, let me know. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2022, 1:53pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/8 "2022-04-08T13:53:16Z")
@zach-welch-aquabyte, a short heads up: [GitHub - TheYoctoJester/meta-mender at master-next](https://github.com/TheYoctoJester/meta-mender/tree/master-next) should give you a current, buildable state. If you run into problems, please let me know. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2022, 5:59pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/9 "2022-04-08T17:59:01Z")
@TheYoctoJester Using your branch, I can build `mender-client` without any extra hacks. Good progress. I plan to start runtime testing sometime next week, and I will post those results here. ---
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2022, 11:49pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/10 "2022-04-20T23:49:32Z")
@TheYoctoJester I now have successfully performed a major update from my `dunfell` image to these new `kirkstone` images (and incremental upgrades from there). Hopefully, the outstanding changes can be merged soon. Also, I noticed today that the upstream `poky` repository now contains a `kirkstone` branch. Does this mean a corresponding mender branch will appear soon, or does that require the assorted `meta-mender` sublayers’ transitive dependencies (`meta-openembedded` and `meta-raspberrypi`) to produce their own `kirkstone` branches? ---
**Author:** ![TheYoctoJester](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/theyoctojester/32/1444_2.png) [@TheYoctoJester](https://hub.mender.io/u/TheYoctoJester)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2022, 7:12pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/11 "2022-04-21T19:12:50Z")
Hi @zach-welch-aquabyte, The `meta-mender` and `meta-mender-community` repositories will get `kirkstone` branches once we have reached production quality. I personally expect both of the mentioned layers to also follow this practise close to the release by the Yocto Project. Greetz, Josef ---
**Author:** ![SuicidalLabRat](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/suicidallabrat/32/311_2.png) [@SuicidalLabRat](https://hub.mender.io/u/SuicidalLabRat)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:36am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/12 "2022-06-09T11:36:43Z")
It’s been a couple months; any update on when a production release supporting kirkstone might drop? SLR- ---
**Author:** ![kacf](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/kacf/32/146_2.png) [@kacf](https://hub.mender.io/u/kacf)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:44pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/13 "2022-06-09T13:44:18Z")
I won’t lie, this integration has been [quite difficult](https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender/compare/master...kacf:master-next), but today I had the first test run where a respectable amount of tests passed. There is still quite a bit of work remaining, which is to fix the remaining failing tests, as well as solving all of [these tasks](https://tracker.mender.io/browse/MEN-5666?jql=status%20not%20in%20%28Done%2C%20Rejected%29%20AND%20fixVersion%20in%20%28yocto-3.5%29), but now I think we can start hoping for “within a few weeks”. ---
**Author:** ![SuicidalLabRat](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/suicidallabrat/32/311_2.png) [@SuicidalLabRat](https://hub.mender.io/u/SuicidalLabRat)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 9:54pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/14 "2022-06-09T21:54:12Z")
Thanks Kristian, and best of luck to you and the team! Q. have you guys been pushing your work in progress to the ‘next’ branch? SLR- ---
**Author:** ![kacf](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/kacf/32/146_2.png) [@kacf](https://hub.mender.io/u/kacf)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 6:27am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/15 "2022-06-10T06:27:04Z")
That’s all of the work in that link, and it is [about to be merged](https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender/pull/1707) to `mendersoftware/meta-mender:master-next`. ---
**Author:** ![zach-welch-aquabyte](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/zach-welch-aquabyte/32/1564_2.png) [@zach-welch-aquabyte](https://hub.mender.io/u/zach-welch-aquabyte)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2022, 7:45pm UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/16 "2022-06-21T19:45:16Z")
I had been using the `TheYoctoJester/master-next` branch to build for `kirkstone`, but that now fails due to the `kirkstone` branch being removed from the `kacf/mender` repository. Meanwhile, the official Mender layer repository still fails to build on the `master-next` branch, due to the OpenSSL 3.0 compatibility issue that I [reported here](https://hub.mender.io/t/mender-client-with-openssl-3-0/4780). Is there a working branch that can be used for ongoing testing? Any further update on the timeline for a `kirkstone` release? ---
**Author:** ![kacf](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/kacf/32/146_2.png) [@kacf](https://hub.mender.io/u/kacf)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 6:49am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/17 "2022-06-22T06:49:03Z")
The OpenSSL issue has already been fixed, but there is no client release yet which has it included. Try setting this option in your `local.conf`: ```auto PREFERRED_VERSION_mender-client = "master-git%" ``` ---
**Author:** ![MarekBelisko](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/marekbelisko/32/33_2.png) [@MarekBelisko](https://hub.mender.io/u/MarekBelisko)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 6:46am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/19 "2022-07-15T06:46:23Z")
HI, on actual `master-next` systemd-boot fails in patch phase. Seems path which is added in meta-mender must be refreshed. Anybody see the same issue or it’s just me doing some stupid thing? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![kacf](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/kacf/32/146_2.png) [@kacf](https://hub.mender.io/u/kacf)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 9:11am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/20 "2022-07-15T09:11:23Z")
systemd-boot is not being tested by us since it was a contributed feature. Looks like somebody needs to pick this up and refresh it. ---
**Author:** ![MarekBelisko](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/hub.mender.io/marekbelisko/32/33_2.png) [@MarekBelisko](https://hub.mender.io/u/MarekBelisko)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 9:25am UTC](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764/21 "2022-07-15T09:25:31Z")
This is fine but `master-next` is not compilable due do\_path error in systemd-boot. So maybe can be dropped in this branch? Thanks. [Next page](https://hub.mender.io/t/kirkstone-branches/4764.md?page=2)