Bitbake service file organization

Question

I have a service created and working. However my current bitbake file makes my folder structure very ugly. To have it work I have to have all of my configuration files in my src folder. I would like to have two folders, src and configfiles. If my tree is as follows

How can I edit my bb file to pull in my src directory and my configfiles?

LICENSE = "MIT"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT;md5=0835ade698e0bcf8506ecda2f7b4f302"

SRC_URI = "file://src"

S = "${WORKDIR}/src"
CF = "${WORKDIR}/configfiles"

inherit systemd autotools
SYSTEMD_SERVICE_${PN} = "helloworld.service"
do_install_append () {
echo "look at this PN ${PN}"
echo "look at this D ${D}"
echo "look at this S ${S}"
echo "look at this CF ${CF}"
    install -d ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    install -m 0644 ${CF}/helloworld.service ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    sed -i -e 's,@BINDIR@,${bindir},g' ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}/helloworld.service
}

Update 1: I added a CF variable. Using bitbake -e helloworld > log.txt I can echo the values of variables and noticed we are not pointing to the config files.

LICENSE = "MIT"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT;md5=0835ade698e0bcf8506ecda2f7b4f302"

SRC_URI = "file://src"

S = "${WORKDIR}/src"
CF = "${WORKDIR}/configfiles"

inherit systemd autotools
SYSTEMD_SERVICE_${PN} = "helloworld.service"
do_install_append () {
echo "look at this PN ${PN}"
echo "look at this D ${D}"
echo "look at this S ${S}"
echo "look at this CF ${CF}"
    install -d ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    install -m 0644 ${CF}/helloworld.service ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    sed -i -e 's,@BINDIR@,${bindir},g' ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}/helloworld.service
}

Bitbake still can not find my makefile.

Update 2: The solution given works but I have one more question. My makefile is very basic:

ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I m4
AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign

SUBDIRS = app

CFLAGS = -Wall -pedantic
include_HEADERS = helloworld.h

bin_PROGRAMS = helloworld
helloworld_SOURCES = helloworld.c

I want to separate my files by folder. I want my main application in a folder /src/app. I edited my makefile to point to app/helloworld.h and app/helloworld.c However this does not find the files. My updated bb file follows

LICENSE = "MIT"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT;md5=0835ade698e0bcf8506ecda2f7b4f302"

FILESEXTRAPATHS:prepend := "${THISDIR}/files/src:${THISDIR}/files/src/app:${THISDIR}/files/services:"

SRC_URI = "file://src \
       file://src/app \
       "

SRC_URI += "file://helloworld.service \
    file://autogen.sh \
    file://configure.ac \
    file://Makefile.am"

S = "${WORKDIR}/src"

inherit systemd autotools
SYSTEMD_SERVICE_${PN} = "helloworld.service"
do_install_append () {
    install -d ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    install -m 0644 ${WORKDIR}/helloworld.service ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}
    sed -i -e 's,@BINDIR@,${bindir},g' ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}/helloworld.service
}

I understand the makefile should be packaged with the code, This just does not work when creating larger applications.

Answer 1

You need to let bitbake know where to look for files, it sounds like you want to keep the Makefile in a separate directory but in most cases the Makefile should be with the source files, feel free to play around with this, the concept is still the same as explained below.

Either way, your directory structure should look something like this:

recipes-core/
  helloworld/
    helloworld_0.1.bb
    files/
      configfiles/
        helloworld.service
      src/
        autogen.sh
        configure.ac
        helloworld.c
        helloworld.h
        Makefile.am

And to let bitbake know where to pull files you use the FILESESXTRAPATHS variable [1]:

FILESEXTRAPATHS:prepend := "${THISDIR}/files/src:${THISDIR}/files/configfiles:"

At this point bitbake knows WHERE to pull the files from, but it doesn't know which files to pull, for this you use the SRC_URI variable (specifically the file:// fetcher) [2]:

SRC_URI += "file://helloworld.service \
    file://autogen.sh \
    file://configure.ac \
    file://helloworld.c \
    file://helloworld.h \
    file://Makefile.am"

This assumes your Makefile will try to find files in the same directory.

The rest of your recipe is fine, the CF variable is no longer necessary, and you just need to change where you're installing the service file from, since SRC_URI[1] will pull it to ${WORKDIR}:

install -m 0644 ${WORKDIR}/helloworld.service ${D}${systemd_system_unitdir}

[1] https://docs.yoctoproject.org/singleindex.html#term-FILESEXTRAPATHS

[2] https://docs.yoctoproject.org/bitbake/singleindex.html#term-SRC_URI