[oe] [PATCH] base.bbclass: add support for SOC_FAMILY in COMPATIBLE_MACHINES

[Graeme Gregory]

 On 04/08/10 18:21, Denys Dmytriyenko wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 04, 2010 at 05:59:30PM +0100, Graeme Gregory wrote:
>>  On 04/08/10 17:13, Denys Dmytriyenko wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 04, 2010 at 12:48:38PM +0100, Phil Blundell wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 2010-08-04 at 13:17 +0200, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
>>>>> FWIW, minimal is using MACHINE_CLASS since quite a while to
>>>>> reduce the need for adding the same files over and over again,
>>>>> this is being used e.g. for HTC msm7 series and OpenEZX series
>>>>> (see conf/machine/include).
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps it's time to standardize something like that.
>>>> Yeah.  I certainly don't think we want a proliferation of such
>>>> mechanisms.  If minimal is already using MACHINE_CLASS then there would
>>>> be some sense in trying to make use of the same thing.
>>>>
>>>> Failing that though, testing COMPATIBLE_MACHINE against MACHINE_CLASS
>>>> probably is more desirable than adding a completely new variable (i.e.
>>>> SOC_FAMILY) for that purpose.
>>> Phil,
>>>
>>> Re: "adding a completely new variable" - SOC_FAMILY has been in use for almost 
>>> a year now. I'm hearing about MACHINE_CLASS for the first time, although it 
>>> appears to be slightly older than SOC_FAMILY though. But it doesn't seem to be 
>>> used anywhere besides in few machine configs and micro.conf. There are no 
>>> recipes actually using it, unlike SOC_FAMILY...
>>>
>>> I'm not saying one is better than the other (actually, unifying them would 
>>> be nice), I'm just saying it's too late to object adding SOC_FAMILY...
>>>
>> As the person who originally added MACHINE_CLASS to openmoko and the OE,
>> then removed it from OE I can say it has different meaning that
>> SOC_FAMILY. MACHINE_CLASS was to identify a range of machines that were
>> 90% the same but had a few differences. It was used in a few recipes
>> which were MACHINE_ARCH to make them use the same ARCH in these recipes
>> to stop them being rebuilt when switching machines.
>>
>> The original use was om-gta01 and om-gta02 which had the same MACHINE_CLASS.
> Graeme,
>
> Thanks for clarifying this! Do you still see a benefit in using MACHINE_CLASS? 
> Why was it removed from OE? I don't see why it can't be used alongside 
> SOC_FAMILY...
>
I removed it as it was only used for the openmoko machines and outside
of openmoko I didn't see the need for the extra maintenance work to save
10ms of build time. I was just not maintaining enough recipes that used it.

That doesn't mean that I'm against people re-introducing it if there is
a real need.

Graeme