[bitbake-devel] [PATCH 1/2] bitbake: ensure -f causes dependent tasks to be re-run

[Björn Stenberg]

Paul Eggleton wrote:
> So my assumption is -f is most often used for the purpose of manually
> forcing a recompile after you have made modifications to the already
> extracted source code under the workdir.

I agree with that.

My concern is based on the fact that people (including myself) don't fully know all the details of how bitbake works, and tend to make assumptions based on other build systems they know, such as simple Makefiles.

I think the fact that bitbake sometime works differently means we should be extra careful about not playing into devlelopers' assumptions. The bitbake option --force sounds rather similar to make's --always-make, especially when it is described as: "force run of specified cmd, regardless of stamp status". While a tangent, the --force parameter in standard unix utils like cp, mv, rm also matter.

If we were to call it something different instead, like -t/--taint, this would avoid some assumptions about its behaviour and make it more clear that the output will be different even if the input is the same.

Sure, it's not a major issue. But I'm fairly confident that if we keep the option name but change its behaviour, I am going to have to explain more than once to developers not following this list or the commit logs why -f does not do what they think (even though one can argue it never did). I'd rather they discover up front that -f is deprecated and that they should look up a new option instead.

-- 
Björn