[OE-core] some simple questions about assignment and appending
Paul Eggleton
paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com
Tue Jun 19 17:32:40 UTC 2012
On Tuesday 19 June 2012 12:28:22 Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> i want to make absolutely sure i understand the mechanics of the
> different types of assignment so i'm looking at this snippet from
> core-image.bbclass:
>
> ... snip ...
>
> PACKAGE_GROUP_qt4-pkgs = "task-core-qt-demos"
>
> CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL = '\
> task-core-boot \
> task-base-extended \
> \
> ${CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL} \
> '
>
> CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL ?= ""
>
> IMAGE_INSTALL ?= "${CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL}"
>
> ... snip ...
>
> first, if you're assigning a fixed string (as in the first line
> shown in the snippet above), i assume there is no functional
> difference in using "=" versus ":=", correct?
Correct. := means immediately expand all variable references and set the
variable's value to the result; if there aren't any references the value is
the same.
> next, is there any value in that null line in the assignment to
> CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL?
There's no functional meaning at least, I assume it is there purely for
formatting reasons.
> next, is it technically necessary to conditionally do this?
>
> CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL ?= ""
>
> if that variable wasn't set, does it really need to be set to the
> empty string?
Yes - references to unset variables are left unexpanded so without that line
if the variable was unset you would end up with a literal
${CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL} within the expanded value of
CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL, which would not be good.
> finally, what are the evaluation mechanics of the "?=" operator?
?= is the same as = except that it only sets the value if it is not already
set at the time the line is parsed.
> in this line,
>
> IMAGE_INSTALL ?= "${CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL}"
>
> is the right-hand side evaluated first? i ask since i find the
> snippet above a bit confusing in that you need to follow backwards to
> deduce what IMAGE_INSTALL is eventually set to. i would think this
> would be easier to read:
>
> CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL = '\
> task-core-boot \
> task-base-extended
>
> IMAGE_INSTALL = "${CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL} ${CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL}"
>
> in this rewriting, i can *immediately* see what values are used to
> construct IMAGE_INSTALL. in the current code, it's nowhere near as
> clear, and you have to backtrack to see how CORE_IMAGE_BASE_INSTALL is
> assigned.
So overall I agree this has unfortunately ended up being rather messy. To me,
the above change should be OK at face value and would improve readability;
however given that we potentially broke people's images/configuration not that
long ago by changing from POKY_* to CORE_IMAGE_* I think we want to be careful
about making significant changes to this again.
Cheers,
Paul
--
Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre
More information about the Openembedded-core
mailing list