[OE-core] [RFC - WIP v2 01/10] conf-files: New recipe to create single recipe for config files

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2014-06-12 at 10:57 -0300, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 2:56 AM, Saul Wold <sgw at linux.intel.com> wrote:
> > This recipe will create 1 package for config files, we could optionally add
> > a bbclass file to ensure consistency with RRECOMMENDS_ = =conf
> >
> > This is a work in progress, the do_install might even beable to automagically
> > generated.  We don't want to create a bbclass for these since it will cause
> > the actual recipe/packaging to become machine specific, using this recipe will
> > ioslate that.
> >
> > [YOCTO #4011]
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Saul Wold <sgw at linux.intel.com>
> 
> I think the configuration file, nowadays, already made those machine
> specific in every BSP which has those overriden so I don't see why use
> a single recipe to provide several configuration files.
> 
> I think it will be confusing and this recipe will fast grow.

There are a few good reasons to do this. 

Machine customisation is spread around a whole load of different recipes
at the moment and its hard to obtain a good view of what files are
available and which ones a BSP author may need to provide.

Its rather ugly to have to provide and maintain multiple bbappend files
with rather ugly syntax within them. Its also rather inefficient from a
build process standpoint to have 15-20 recipes just packaging
configuration files.

The intent isn't to mandate *every* config file should be in this
recipe, you will as now be able to add additional ones. Where we see the
same files being added in many layers, adding something common and
shared makes sense though.

It should in some cases also allow the "core" recipe to stop being
machine specific and shared, improving build efficiency. There is little
point in a recipe becomming machine specific over a config file.

So I'd consider this move a consolation which we can improve over time.
For new users I'd suggest that one more common place for the majority of
machine specific files would be more understandable too.

Cheers,

Richard