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

[Richard Purdie]

On Fri, 2014-06-13 at 12:30 -0300, Otavio Salvador wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Richard Purdie
> <richard.purdie at linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I understand and mostly agree. However I don't want to have a recipe
> with 20 configuration files where I'd need just two.
> 
> So I think we'd need to have a way to 'enable/disable' each
> configuration override. Does it makes sense?

I'd have thought our standard inheritance would apply so that if you
didn't append a machine specific version, the default would be used?

Cheers,

Richard