[oe] Why PREFERRED_VERSION setting of <distro>.conf overrules local.conf setting ?

[Frans Meulenbroeks]

2010/8/10 Graham Gower <graham.gower at gmail.com>:
> On 10 August 2010 04:31, Frans Meulenbroeks <fransmeulenbroeks at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2010/8/9 Chris Larson <clarson at kergoth.com>:
>>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:26 AM, Hauser, Wolfgang (external) <
>>> Wolfgang.Hauser.external at eads.com> wrote:

>>> PREFERRED_VERSION_<package>_local = "xxx" is how you use the override.
>>
>> The real solution woud be to either temporary store the
>> PREFERRED_VERSION and apply it later on.
>> Alternately we could parse local.conf twice, the first time ignoring
>> the PREFERRED lines, and the 2nd time only looking at these.
>> Yet another solution could be to split local.conf into two pieces, one
>> with settings like MACHINE and DISTRO, the other one with the
>> overrides.
>
> Wouldn't it be far simpler to fix the distro conf file(s)? E.g. apply
> something like this:
> s/^PREFERRED_VERSION_\([a-z]*\) =/PREFERRED_VERSION_\1 ?=/

Yeah.
Didn't really think about that one, but if distro's want to change and
adhere to it, that would be the simplest solution
Machines that pin something should probably also use weak binding.
Conceptually it is probably marginally less desirable than a solution
where local.conf has *always* control.

What do the distro's think about this?

Frans