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

[Trevor Woerner]

I hesitate to weigh in because this is a big issue that can only really be
decided by the major players in this project, and I'm well aware of the fact
that I'm not one of those people.

But on the other hand, I don't want the silence to be interpreted as
non-interest. So instead of pestering everyone with "me too" replies, I'll try
to be succinct.

On Sat 2016-09-03 @ 12:14:57 PM, Martin Jansa wrote:
> 3) confusion between poky as a DISTRO or as a git repository,

Ideally poky could be a DISTRO and nothing else and be named meta-poky and
exist as its own, top-level layer. (or, if moving forward with the name "poky"
is too confusing then pick something else and make that the de-facto Yocto
reference distro).

Imagine if every DISTRO maintained its own repository with a "meta"
subdirectory that was simply a copy of OE's meta, and a "bitbake" subdirectory
that was simply a copy of the bitbake project. It wouldn't take long before
someone would come along and refactor everything. Of course, over time, all
these "meta" and "bitbake" subdirectories would diverge and show various
levels of maintenance and become a large headache for anyone actually trying
to work on products!

I guess poky, the repository, is useful because it allows the project to skirt
the issue of whether to use git submodules, or repo, or whatever else? Are
there other benefits? Hopefully at some point the duplication maintenance
would outweigh this benefit?

It seems disingenuous to be, on the one hand, teaching people that in order to
produce an image for a device one needs to obtain the correct BSP layer,
select a DISTRO layer, then combine that with the OE/meta boilerplate in order
to build. Then, on the other hand, combining all the above into the poky
repository to save everyone the effort. Of course, I know some of the people
involved in this project and know that they are all very sincere people;
therefore I know they're not intentionally trying to confuse people, but I
could see how someone might wonder about this apparent bait-and-switch.

The poky repository is vitally important because the community has decided
that the contents of this repository forms the baseline for the metrics of
this project. If a BSP in the poky repository fails to build, a release is not
made. If a build using the poky repository starts to take a significant amount
of more time, then a fix is implemented or the increase justified. Releases
don't go out the door until the poky repository is happy. But, as such, it
should be viewed as an internal project that shouldn't ever see the light of
day, should almost not be public, and shouldn't be referred to in the quick
start guides etc. In this light the poky repository should be something that
only the people responsible for making releases should know about.

How often do new people to this project follow the "Getting Started Guide"
perfectly fine, then try to build an image for some board (or distro) that
isn't part of the poky repository and fall flat on their faces? In my opinion:
often. Why is that? It's because the Getting Started Guide and the poky
repository haven't really taught them how to find and combine layers on their
own; which is a very important and vital skill if someone is going to be doing
builds with these tools. It hasn't taught them exactly what they need
(OE/meta, BSP, distro) to build an image.