[oe] Yocto Project and OE - Where now?

[Philip Balister]

On 01/19/2011 02:01 PM, C Michael Sundius wrote:
> in rereading this I don't want to seem ungrateful, since we've certainly
> benefited from the great effort on everyones part (package and distro
> maintainers, yacto and OE... everyone).

Mike, well thought out replies from people using OE are always welcome. 
I think you made some really good points that I completely agree with.

Thanks,

Philip

>
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 1:55 PM, C Michael Sundius<msundius at sundius.com>wrote:
>
>>
>> It seems to me that this is a bit of a battle between the package
>> maintainers and the distro maintainers.. Looking at this from my managements
>> side of things, we use OE as a tool and its really just a means to the end.
>> our customers demand that we do not change things (versions of software),
>> they demand stability and they view a change in busybox or anything else a
>> threat to stability. our management has also made an edict that we can not
>> use gplv3. For completely non technical reasons we simply cannot move to new
>> package versions without a substantial business justification. I suspect
>> that that there are many (more than you realize) folk out there who are
>> using OE for their own distro. If you simply whack package versions because
>> something newer came out you will have these people maintaining separate
>> recipes and we'll be swamped with the load and this tool will loose one of
>> its best attributes.
>>
>> The comment that disturbed me was that distros should just move ahead
>> "because its making things hard for the package maintainer". That doesn't
>> wash with me because if people are using your package then you should
>> support it or let someone else be the maintainer. In essence the distro's
>> use of that package are your customers and the reason you have a job. OE
>> does not exist as a product, rather a tool that enables customers, you can't
>> create this in a vacuum without understanding who is using it.
>>
>> distro maintainers are not all dumb and if they are they'll be the last
>> single one using an outdated version of the software. When that happens a
>> smart package maintainer will call it out leave out the old package.
>> Further, it would be nice for a warning to take place so that it might have
>> a "depracated" tag associated with the recipe for one release cycle to see
>> if anyone cribs.
>>
>> So I'm standing with the guy w/ asbestos short on. I'd like to see that OE
>> err on the side of "do no harm" to existing users. Its hard enough to rally
>> the troops to move to updated packages much less updated meta without you
>> leaving perfectly reasonable versions of software out of oe-core.
>>
>> mike
>>
>>
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