[Openembedded-architecture] Proposal: dealing with language-specific build tools/dependency management tools

[Trevor Woerner]

On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 4:25 PM, Trevor Woerner <twoerner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is a link to a talk given at the most recent linux.conf.au given
> by someone who works at SuSE doing package management discussing
> essentially the same things:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ua5aeKKDzU
> Package Managers all the way down

In case you haven't had a chance to watch this video I wanted to point
out some of the items that jumped out at me that I think are relevant:

- First off, remember this person isn't involved in OE/Yocto, but
distribution package management in general. Maybe we need to reach out
to other such people involved in similar activities across more Linux
distributions? Maybe some answers are already out there?

- Almost all "new" languages think they need to solve the
package/dependency issue internally. However, most of them get it
wrong and will take a while before all corner cases are handled
properly.

- Traditionally putting together a Linux system involved
(cross)compiling a bootloader, Linux kernel, and userspace. Most of
which, _traditionally_, was written in C/C++. This meant the same
tools and procedures could be used for building the "base system"
versus the "user-space apps". Maybe this is changing. Maybe we need
different tools or procedures depending on whether we're building the
base system versus the user-space. In other words, Henry just pointed
out how "npm install" doesn't fit into the OE model of "fetch, patch,
configure, build, deploy". Maybe that's because that model needs to be
abandoned when building these apps (but can be retained for
"traditional" code)?

- This "new model" is not limited to "new" languages. The C/C++
community is jealous ;-) of this new model and some are looking to
adopt it for these traditional languages as well! See
https://conan.io/