[Openembedded-architecture] who should set default tunes?

[Phil Blundell]

On Tue, 2017-05-02 at 08:01 -0500, Mark Hatle wrote:
> 
> I disagree.  The DISTRO sets the various flags and options, but
> shouldn't have anything to do with the ABI. 

I'm not quite sure what "flags and options" you're referring to here.
But, contrary to the second half of your statement, selecting the ABI
is one of the primary competencies of the DISTRO.  Only the DISTRO is
in a position to know:

- what the set of hardware is that it wishes to support;

- how it plans to configure its kernel(s);

- what filesystem layout it plans to use (which can have implications
on, for example, the name of the interpreter which gets burned into its
binaries);

- what tradeoffs it wishes to make between optimisation for one
platform at the expense of another;

- how many different variants of the same binaries it wants to support,
and how it wants to do that (DL_HWCAP, multiple binary packages, ...)

- how many different images it wishes to ship, and what machines it
wishes to support with each;

- what pre-existing binaries, and/or other distributions, it might want
to maintain compatibility with;

- what upgrade and/or downgrade paths it wants to provide;

- what political considerations (e.g. around endianness) it might have
to take into account;

- and no doubt many other things that might influence binary
compatibility in one way or another.

p.