[oe] [RFC] ANGSTROM_MODE -> SYSTYPE

[Richard Purdie]

On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 00:31 +0200, Paul Sokolovsky wrote:
>    So, renaming ANGSTROM_MODE to DISTRO_LIBC is obviously move in the
> right direction, but let's consider if we're ready to move on wider front
> at the same time. I personally already have in my tree changes which
> allow to just check out OE and bitbake, have bitbake on the path,
> create a build dir in well-known location, and then type
> 
> DISTRO=angsrom SYSTYPE=uclibc MACHINE=h4000 bitbake initramfs-bootmenu-image
> 
> or
> 
> DISTRO=angsrom MACHINE=hx4700 bitbake x11-image
> 
> or
> 
> DISTRO=generic-uclibc-opt MACHINE=wdmybook bitbake nano
> 
> or
> 
> DISTRO=openwrt-sdk MACHINE=brcm24 bitbake nano
> 
> 
> And voila. No config file copying and editing. No
> obscure environment variable setting. No wrapper scripts. No
> Makefiles. It just works.

I'm not convinced about this :(. Why?

The appearance of a standard DISTRO_LIBC variable implies that "glibc"
and "uclibc" options are always going to work. What if the distro
doesn't support one of them? Is a bug report about some parameter passed
to this variable not working for a given distro valid?

The point is that all this configuration is distro specific. It should
be up to the distro to decide what kind of users it wishes to cater for
and how to enable those users to use OE. 

If Angstrom wants single variable configuration (or triplet variable
configuration with MACHINE, DISTRO, DISTRO_MODE/whatever) then thats
fine. Rolling that out onto every other distro breaks the distro
abstraction though.

If you want to add some common code which handles such a variable
variable that is also fine. I just worry about making it a generic and
mandatory variable, I think it should remain distro specific (and hence
up to the maintainers of a given distro).

Cheers,

Richard