[oe] RFC: Support for R/W git in bitbake

[Ulf Samuelsson]

On 2012-04-18 09:28, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> On Wednesday 18 April 2012 03:34:27 Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
>> 1. If I am busy working on an application, then it simplifies the
>> development process.
>>       I can modify the code in the tree and push.
>>       This is mainly for kernel development.
>>
>> 2. If I work on a prerelease of some S/W drivers/Applications under NDA,
>>       then I cannot make that code publicly available
>>       but I still want to put  that on my Internet accessible git server.
>>       Typicailly this is before the release of a new chip and info about
>> the chip should not be
>>       made public before the chip is released.
>>
>> 3.  I want to be able to ship something similar to the Angstrom setup
>> scripts
>>        to someone else, and have them build an image, but it should not
>> be available
>>        to anyone not accepted (without public key at the git server).
>>
>> There are other uses for such a functionality, but those are my
>> immediate needs.
>>
>> As you see, this is mostly for development.
>> Once the code is released, then the recipe would be changed to the
>> normal git access.
>>
>> Didn't know anything about the externalsrc bbclass, but after checking,
>> I would say no.
>> It won't do the two things above. I do see the use of it though.
> externalsrc should handle everything except automatically fetching the source;
> for that you need to have your own local git clone (which of course can be
> r/w). I guess it depends on whether you expect to be sending such recipes to
> non-developers; for developers it ought not to be too much of a hassle to have
> their own local git clone.
>
> The only problem with having an r/w checkout you are doing development in
> under WORKDIR is that if you bitbake -c clean the recipe you will lose
> whatever you are working on - externalsrc avoids this.
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
I am working with a company, which OEMs their solution to other companies.
They get tons of questions from those customers, and based on that
I would like to avoid anything which requires manual intervention
of the developer.

As for cleaning out changes, it might happen, but I am prepared to take 
the risk.
Today I am initializing a git after the extract anyway.

I am sure I will use externalsrc for something.

-- 

Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson
ulf at emagii.com
+46 722 427437