[OE-core] RFC: Using formfactor data in other recipes

[Paul Eggleton]

Hi all,

Andrea has been doing some cleanup on meta-handheld, and he and I have come 
across what seems to be a bit of a shortcoming with formfactor over the 
variable-based alternative that was used in OE-Classic (MACHINE_GUI_CLASS, 
MACHINE_DISPLAY_WIDTH_PIXELS, MACHINE_DISPLAY_HEIGHT_PIXELS etc.). In 
meta-opie, the latter variables are still being used in a machine-specific 
packagegroup recipe to select the appropriate set of pixmaps to be installed 
for each machine based on the screen resolution, so you don't have to have 
pixmaps installed that you're never going to use (which would waste storage 
space).

formfactor is the current method supported in OE-Core for representing 
differences in machine display/input characteristics, however it seems only 
queryable at runtime since its files are not written into the sysroot. We could 
change it to stage to the sysroot, and therefore the data could be queried at 
least at packaging time in other recipes that depend on formfactor. Does this 
sound like a reasonable solution for this kind of problem, or is there a 
better solution?

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre