[OE-core] [Openembedded-architecture] Future of sato and X in oe-core

[Mark Hatle]

On 2/11/20 8:35 AM, Alexander Kanavin wrote:
> X might and likely will start to bitrot sooner for those not using RHEL 8 and
> its very conservative and never changing software stack. I can imagine Red Hat
> has no interest in supporting it on Fedora going forward for instance, they'll
> just make Xwayland work, and rip the standalone server and its drivers and
> libraries out. 

X is incredibly stable code base.  I think as long as there are no major
changes, the bitrot will be 'minor'.  I'm more worried about security response,
especially as it goes longer and longer with only a small set of maintainers of
last resort.

> Oe-core will have X for as long as the burden of fixing build errors and runtime
> issues with custom patches is not too painful. The point I am trying to make is
> that I am not convinced oe-core needs a 'real' ui at all, and opinion to the
> contrary should justify the need.

It's already OE's responsibility to fix build errors and integration run-time
issues.  When the burden goes beyond our resources, then we need to stop or find
a champion who will taker that burden.

I think we need to plan for that for all of the components of the system, not
just X, but X is a good starting point.

I also don't think oe-core itself needs a 'real' UI, and as my previous response
said -- we do need something though to test that the graphical framework is
working properly.

In the past this often comes back to needing a LOT of a UI in order to
adequately test all of the components of the system.   If wayland/weston has a
proper test suite that exercises all of the various parts of and pieces of the
systems -- then the need for a UI drops considerably.

(but we still have the need for some sort of example/demostration...)

--Mark

> Alex
> 
> On Tue, 11 Feb 2020 at 15:13, Adrian Bunk <bunk at stusta.de
> <mailto:bunk at stusta.de>> wrote:
> 
>     On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 03:01:20PM +0100, Alexander Kanavin wrote:
>     > Specifically (sorry for the rapid-followup), I think the main value
>     > proposition of core is integration and testing of various language
>     > toolchains and core libraries. UIs in embedded space can mean pretty much
>     > anything, and so I'd leave that to specialised layers.
> 
>     That's actually quite different from your original email.
> 
>     Your original email raised the problem that X might start to bitrot
>     after the end of support for RHEL 8 in the year 2029 (sic).
> 
>     What functionality should be in core for users/demo/QA/...
>     is not strictly related to X versus Wayland.
> 
>     > Alex
> 
>     cu
>     Adrian
> 
> 
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