Generally in Yocto there is no way to override .bbclass files like with .bb files (using .bbappend), to archive that it is needed to copy whole class file and move to another layer, I was able to manage that with this configuration:
layer structure:
$ tree ../meta-test/
../meta-test/
├── classes
│ └── image-live.bbclass
├── conf
│ └── layer.conf
├── COPYING.MIT
├── README
└── recipes-example
└── example.bb
3 directories, 5 files
content of example.bb recipe:
$ cat ../meta-test/recipes-example/example/example.bb
LICENSE = "CLOSED"
inherit image-live
and finally really important thing*, the configuration file conf/bblayers.conf needs to be configured with this order meta-test/ above meta/ layer:
$ tail -n6 conf/bblayers.conf
BBLAYERS ?= " \
/home/user/poky/meta-test \
/home/user/poky/meta \
/home/user/poky/meta-poky \
/home/user/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
"
$ bitbake -e example -D | grep ^DEBUG:\\sInheriting\\s.*image-live.bbclass\\s\(from
DEBUG: Inheriting /home/user/poky/meta-test/classes/image-live.bbclass (from /home/user/poky/meta-test/recipes-example/example/example.bb:3)
*I don't know why bitbake layer priority doesn't work here, only modifying layers order in conf/bblayers.conf allows me to achieve the main goal:
$ bitbake-layers show-layers
NOTE: Starting bitbake server...
layer path priority
==========================================================================
meta /home/user/poky/meta 5
meta-test /home/user/poky/meta-test 10
meta-poky /home/user/poky/meta-poky 5
meta-yocto-bsp /home/user/poky/meta-yocto-bsp 5
layer meta-test/ below meta/ in conf/bblayers.conf:
$ tail -n6 conf/bblayers.conf
BBLAYERS ?= " \
/home/user/poky/meta \
/home/user/poky/meta-test \
/home/user/poky/meta-poky \
/home/user/poky/meta-yocto-bsp \
"
$ bitbake -e example -D | grep ^DEBUG:\\sInheriting\\s.*image-live.bbclass\\s\(from
DEBUG: Inheriting /home/user/poky/meta/classes/image-live.bbclass (from /home/user/poky/meta-test/recipes-example/example/example.bb:3)