[OE-core] bug in recipe version priorities across layers?

[Andreas Oberritter]

On 23.02.2012 15:04, Martin Jansa wrote:
> Afaik latest version from layer with highest priority wins. Which
> doesn't always mean latest version globally.
> 
> DEFAULT_PREFERENCE doesn't help e.g. to demote development version in some
> layer with higher priority.
> 
> But PREFERRED_VERSION does work.

Thanks, Martin! I didn't expect that, but it's an explanation. Is this 
documented somewhere? I think OE-classic behaved differently.

I noticed that "bitbake-layers show-overlayed" nicely prints the 
available versions in order of preference. For some packages, I don't 
understand the ordering though, e.g.:

python-setuptools:
  meta-oe              0.6c11-ml3
  meta                 0.6c11-ml3
python-setuptools-native:
  meta                 0.6c11-ml3
  meta-oe              0.6c11-ml3

(I modified bitbake-layers to include PR in its output)

The diff between both layers looks like this:

--- openembedded-core/meta/recipes-devtools/python/python-setuptools_0.6c11.bb	2012-01-18 15:05:39.876945863 +0100
+++ meta-openembedded/meta-oe/recipes-devtools/python/python-setuptools_0.6c11.bb	2012-01-18 15:10:23.816943155 +0100
@@ -29,3 +29,5 @@
 SRC_URI[sha256sum] = "630fea9b726320b73ee3ca6ff61732cb32675b0389be658080fe46383b87a1d3"
 
 BBCLASSEXTEND = "native"
+
+NATIVE_INSTALL_WORKS = "1"
---

The only occurence of python-setuptools(-native) is:
meta/classes/setuptools.bbclass:DEPENDS += "python-setuptools-native"

Another strange one, this time with unequal versions:

mpfr:
  meta-oe              3.0.0-r4
  meta                 3.1.0-r0
mpfr-native:
  meta                 3.1.0-r0
  meta-oe              3.0.0-r4

Would lowering the priority of meta-openembedded affect its ability to
bbappend OE-core's recipes? Is it possible to lower its priority, or to
raise the priority of OE core, without modifying conf/layer.conf in
either layer?

Regards,
Andreas

>> - The older wpa-supplicant is provided for a different machine.
>> - Both bitbake and openembedded-core are from today's master branches.
>>
>> The problem: The machine I'm building for also picks up version 0.5.10, 
>> unless I eiher copy 0.7.3 from openembedded-core to my layer or delete 
>> version 0.5.10 from my layer. Deleting wpa-supplicant_0.7.3.bbappend 
>> doesn't change the behaviour.