[OE-core] [RFC][PATCH 0/5] drop dependency on GNOME if x11 is disabled

[Richard Purdie]

On Wed, 2012-02-22 at 12:26 +0100, Andreas Oberritter wrote:
> I'd like to stop various GNOME packages from being built in a
> distro which doesn't use x11. For me, this fixes many unwanted
> dependencies, e.g. librsvg -> gconf -> polkit -> systemd -> udev-systemd
> on a system with an old kernel (2.6.18), which cannot use a recent
> udev. Of course, it saves some build time, too.

That dependency doesn't exist in OE-Core FWIW.

> I guess, additional PR bumps for all users of gconf, gnomebase and
> gtk-icon-cache bbclasses are required in order to pick up this change,
> right?

This is one of the few cases I'm tempted to say no, its not required.

>  Does someone already have a script to automatically generate
> a list of affected recipes? Is the PR bump required, considering that
> this change mainly reduces build-time dependencies?

The plan is to rely on sstate's hash changes and the OEBasicHash
signature generator for this in future.

>  It also disables
> some preinst and postrm hooks, but they don't really hurt on existing
> images.

I'd suggest for these we modify them to only run if the appropriate
executables are present. If not present, then it won't hurt anything.

>  I suppose there aren't many images using GNOME packages
> without x11. Any opinions?
> 
> Is it OK to use the 'x11' flag for this purpose? Is anybody using
> GNOME with a different backend? Would it be better to introduce
> a 'gnome' (and 'gconf'?) distro feature flag?

I looked at these patches and my conclusion was no, the x11 flag is not
appropriate in this context.

Why? It would break gtk+ compiled against directfb for example. In the
future we'll likely have a similar issue if gtk+ is compiled against
something like wayland.

I also don't like "gnome" since you are using some gnome packages.
Specifically, you seem to want to avoid gtk and gconf. So all things
considered this needs a bit more discussion...

Cheers,

Richard