[Openembedded-architecture] Notes from the OEDAM "Naming Table"

[Sean Hudson]

On 8/30/2016 3:14 PM, Behan Webster wrote:
> On 2016-06-03 06:03 PM, Behan Webster wrote:
>> During the latest OEDAM meeting, following ELC2016 in San Diego, a 
>> discussion began regarding Yocto/OE "branding" as well as how
>> confusing it is for newbies to understand all the terminology.
>> Since this discussion was taking too much time away from the OEDAM,
>> interested people gathered at lunch to continue the conversation.
>> What follows is what was discussed at the naming table at OEDAM.
>> 
>> The problem is that the messaging and branding surrounding 
>> Yocto/Poky/OE is confusing for everyone... sometimes even those
>> directly involved in these projects! Explaining the distinctions
>> between all these terms is convoluted and confusing. The ultimate
>> users of all these things mostly don't care: they just want to use
>> "yocto" (whatever that is) and build their product. Most people
>> still don't understand the differences and just randomly piece 
>> together "Yocto/OE/Poky/distribution/build system/tool" and hope
>> they get it right when asking questions.
>> 
>> Minimally, explaining that the Yocto Project Release 2.0 (Jethro)
>> is in fact Poky version 14.0, or that you can get a git version of
>> the Yocto Project by cloning poky.git is just dizzying.
>> 
>> The technologies in question are powerful, capable and complex, but
>> they should not be this hard to explain to others! OSVs, for
>> example, not only have to explain all of this to customers, they
>> also have to explain the relationship between OE/Yocto and their
>> products. All these things should be able to be explained in simple
>> language.
>> 
>> Many of the terms (such as "distribution" and "poky" itself) are
>> not only overloaded, their definitions have changed over time. Also
>> there is a lot of confusion surrounding the use of "meta-foo" to
>> both refer to the layer name within a release, or the git repo from
>> which it was originally pulled. Again, an important distinction,
>> but also something which most people don't care about nor
>> appreciate.
>> 
>> This discussion was meant to be the start of a conversation (and
>> not yet solve all these problems). The following agreements, and
>> resulting recommendations were made.
>> 
>> Agreements:
>> 
>> 1) There is a problem with naming/messaging/branding
>> 
>> 2) There is minimally a problem with the naming of the git repo and
>> Yocto Project release
>> 
>> After discussing a number of possible options the following 
>> recommendations were agreed upon:
>> 
>> 1) Rename the git repo to "yocto-toolbox.git" - The toolbox
>> contains a snapshot of OE-core (and bitbake) - The toolbox contains
>> a distribution layer (meta-poky) - The toolbox could contain more
>> than one distribution layer - The toolbox contains further scripts
>> and tools added by the Yocto Project - The toolbox contains
>> documentation for all these things - Not all the tools in this
>> toolbox need be used - Tools in this tool box could be replaced or
>> omitted by OSVs - Further tools could be added by the end-user* or
>> OSV
>> 
>> * (in this case the end-user are the engineers using a Yocto
>> Project release to build something)
>> 
>> 2) Rename release tarball to "yocto-toolbox-<version>.tar.xz" -
>> This makes it consistent with recommendation #1, and decouples it 
>> from the Poky release number which is mostly superfluous. -
>> Determining the version of poky could easily be provided in a 
>> meta-poky conf file or by a tool
>> 
>> (Alternatively, instead of "toolbox" we could call it "kitchen" to 
>> keep with the cooking theme. :) )
>> 
>> There are plenty of examples of a project release containing
>> snapshots of another project: - Debian includes specific releases
>> of gcc/glibc/bash/etc, but we still call it "Debian" - OpenDaylight
>> contains a release of OpenStack, but we still call it 
>> “OpenDaylight"
> 
> Since OEDEM is fast approaching it would be good to get a discussion 
> going on this topic, so it can be addressed properly in Berlin.
> 
> Naming is important and the current names are problematic outside of 
> this community.
> 
> Behan
> 

Behan,

  This topic does come up frequently and I would really like to see
resolved as well.  As you may recall, I was one of the participants in
the discussion over lunch, so, I agree with all of the recommendations. :)

  It seems to me that the renaming of the poky git repo and the delivery
tarball fall squarely on Richard's and other YP maintainers' shoulders.
However, the convention of naming layers, meta-xyz, may fall somewhere
in between the two projects.

  So, Richard, what are your thoughts?

-- 
Sean

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