[bitbake-devel] [PATCH V3 0/2] bitbake-layers: add a ability to query layer dependencies from layer index

[Paul Eggleton]

On Monday 02 February 2015 16:05:52 Paul Eggleton wrote:
> Hi Chong,
> 
> On Friday 23 January 2015 13:28:32 Chong Lu wrote:
> > Change since V2:
> > re-split for IPv6 URL parsing
> > 
> > The following changes since commit 
35c9fa0588ed8e88b541a6c80cc1517324616cea:
> >   maintainers: Update for non-maintained recipes (2015-01-20 21:39:41
> >   +0000)
> > 
> > are available in the git repository at:
> >   git://git.pokylinux.org/poky-contrib chonglu/layerindex
> >   http://git.pokylinux.org/cgit.cgi/poky-contrib/log/?h=chonglu/layerindex
> > 
> > Chong Lu (2):
> >   bitbake.conf: Add two variables for layer index
> >   bitbake-layers: add a ability to query layer dependencies from layer
> >   index
> 
> Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. This is definitely
> improving, some feedback though:
> 
> * I think the new subcommand would make more sense if it were switched
> around so that it was fetching by default (and renamed as appropriate).
> Perhaps "layerindex-fetch" (with -n to avoid fetching and just report what
> it would fetch).
> 
> * I think the layer index URL specified in the OE variable should be to the
> root rather than to /api - instead have that suffix added by the code that
> does the API calls. This makes it usable as a URL for the index for
> presenting to the user if needed.
> 
> * Can you rename the two variables to BBLAYERS_LAYERINDEX_URL and
> BBLAYERS_FETCH_DIR (sorry I didn't think of this earlier).
> 
> * Please mention bitbake-layers in the comment above the settings in
> bitbake.conf so it's clear where these variables are used.
> 
> * By using -q with git you lose the status output which can be very useful
> given how long it can take to fetch some layers e.g. meta-oe, so can you
> drop this?
> 
> * Can you add a check to see if the layer has already been fetched before
> fetching it and skip the fetch if it does (but not skip the add)?
> 
> * If I run "bitbake-layers show-layer-deps meta-security" I get an error:
> ERROR: Can NOT get meta-security git repo and subdir
> (The code currently expects there to be a subdir, but this is an optional
> field, not all layers have a subdirectory, meta-security is one example.)
> 
> * I think you may be able to get away with skipping the initial parse by
> passing config_only=True to init_bbhandler(). If you can, this will save a
> bit of time each time you run the command.

I just noticed another issue - dependencies-of-dependencies aren't handled 
here either; e.g. meta-security's dependencies have just been updated so that 
it now depends on meta-networking, and meta-networking depends on meta-python 
but that's not listed when I run bitbake-layers show-layer-deps meta-security. 
I think maybe this is a deficiency in the layer index API - it would be faster 
if there was one call we could make to get the entire list of dependencies, 
URLs and subdirectories for the entire dependency chain.

I know this is probably further than you expected to go with this bug, but is 
that API enhancement something you could look into adding?

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre