[oe] BBVERSIONS

[Khem Raj]

On (23/03/10 10:47), Martin Jansa wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 03:26:53PM -0700, Chris Larson wrote:
> > Greetings all,
> > 
> > Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?  I've been wondering if this is really
> > worthwhile, but I think it is.  I think there is value in keeping old
> > versions around, but this allows us to avoid cluttering up the repository as
> > much, and makes it so that one change to a recipe can affect all the
> > versions in that range by default, or all versions, rather than just the one
> > version you tested.  Of course, ideally you'd test all versions, but that's
> > the case today too, its just that now our recipes get bitrotted instead.
> >  Personally, I'd rather see the old version content continue to be brought
> > forward by default, and if it fails to build with that, we fix it, but it's
> > easier to fix a build than to unclutter the repository.
> > 
> > I'm hoping to get some input on this :)

I think it could be an useful experiment as an option for packages which
dont change so much as the releases progress. However adding stuff to build
for multiple version in same recipe can be error prone. I have seen this
happening with changes made to .inc files when other recipes break
silently.

Currently we have per version recipes (roughly) which gives a playground
for a given version one can do customization fairly easily and they are
contained.

If I make change to a given version the recipe will also affect other
versions even if nothing of interest was done for those versions due to say PR bump isnt it ?

I think moving bitrotted recipes to different location is probably also a good
way to speed up parsing time for general users without changing the bb
files too much. 

Recently asking new users about bitbake they were pretty much confused with
syntax I think this will add to it.

Thanks

-Khem