I've replaced content in the target_skeleton, and thus wanted to rebuild the rootfs.tar. I did the following: 1) rm -rf target 2) rm -rf build/.root 3) rm -rf `find build -name "\.stamp_target_installed" 4) make On the device I got a "Kernel panic - not syncing: No init found.". The problem was that only when removing .stamp_staging_installed and stamps/ext-toolchain-installed also the libs on the target were installed. It would be a great help, that removing all ".stamp_target_installed" and ".root" would create a bootable target filesystem.
This is not a bug: this feature doesn't exist and is not supported currently. I'm moving the bug to enhancement.
I'm closing this bug as Wontfix, for the following reasons: - buildroot aims at being clear and simple, and the behavior desired by the submitter is not 'simple'. - we have other mechanisms in place to modify the target without touching the skeleton. Please have a look at the post-build and rootfs-overlay mechanisms: http://www.buildroot.org/downloads/manual/manual.html#rootfs-custom
I think this bug should be marked as FIXED instead of WONTFIX. build/toolchain-external-undefined/.stamp_target_installed is now used instead of stamps/ext-toolchain-installed. As far as I understand, it is behavior asked by submitter.