[oe] [RFC] ANGSTROM_MODE -> SYSTYPE

[Leon Woestenberg]

Hello Paul,

> ...the proposal
> is about introduction of the standard OE variable name for distro
> parameter tweaking. Its meaning however completely depends on the
> distro.
>
Do you see the contradiction? A *standard* OE variable name that
*completely depends* on the
distro. Please, no.

> Some distro needs switch libc's. Some needs to switch WMs.
> Others need to switch many other things, possibly, in combinations.
> Very good. OE recommends a standard general syntax for that - a
> SYSTYPE. Exact format of what goes into SYSTYPE and its semantics is
> up to distro (and users will know about all that by reading distro's
> docs). (Now that we talk about validation, it puts additional
> syntactic constraints on SYSTYPE value, that's why I'm personally not
> keen to start with [rigid] validation from the beginning).
>
MACHINE and DISTRO are extremely well understood: they select one
option out of a list, and the name implies what you select.

Extremely user friendly.

SYSTYPE does not fulfill these two properties in your proposal.

> > +0 for the making DISTRO_LIBC a global C library selector.
>
>   Gotcha! That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid - proliferation of
> adhoc distro config parameters! We have ANGSTROM_MODE now, supposedly
> FooNas will want to call it FOONAS_LIBC, with lots others alike. Then
>
No, "DISTRO_LIBC". Literally. Like Marcin set out more explicitly than I did.
> bitbake --distro=foo --systype=bar --machine=baz package
>
Argh. No!

>   And nothing really precludes SYSTYPE to be not just "libc", but
> "libc,release", or "libc,release,wm=xfce", or
> "libc,release,wm=xfce,weird_user_config=some_file.conf".
>
Sorry, you didn't convince me, at all.

I strongly agree with Richard to either not do this (therefore my -2),
or either to define a sane namespace that some distro's might support,
agreeing with Marcin.

Regards,
-- 
Leon