[oe] SOC_FAMILY broken

[Frans Meulenbroeks]

2010/9/2 Michael 'Mickey' Lauer <mickey at vanille-media.de>:
> Am Mittwoch, den 01.09.2010, 23:22 +0200 schrieb Leon Woestenberg:
>> On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 11:14 PM, Frans Meulenbroeks
>> <fransmeulenbroeks at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Root cause: if SOC_FAMILY is not set (awhich is the case for most
>> > MACHINEs  and all distro's except angstrom) the test in base.bbclass
>> >
>>
>> Good point, but I never understood SOC_FAMILY. From an old email:
>>
>> "SOC_FAMILY is defining a family of processors and the features that processor
>> has.  Whereas MACHINE_CLASS is defining a type of device and its features which
>> can use different processors."
>>
>> I think the first sentence is contradicting itself.
>>
>> A "family of processors" vs. "features that processor had". This can
>> be fully orthogonal (worst case),
>> so the definition of the variable is crap. I wonder, has it proven
>> more useful than cumbersome?
>
> I still don't know why we need both SOC_FAMILY and MACHINE_CLASS in the
> first place. MACHINE_CLASS has been around for much longer and if you
> look how it's being used or intended to use, you see that there are
> hardly any processor differences in the members of those classes (e.g.
> openezx, qualcomm msm7, om-gta01/02, clamshell zaurus models, ...).
>
> I'm still unconvinced that we need both variables.

Neither do I.
Also it has been requested during the review (if I recall correctly by
Tom) to provide documentation, but sadly enough that review comment
was ignored and the change pushed anyway.
Perhaps we should make explicit that the introduction of a new user
var also must come with the associated documentation.

Frans