[oe] Splitting meta-oe

[Frans Meulenbroeks]

2012/1/25 Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton at linux.intel.com>

> Hi all,
>
> The meta-oe layer [1] is becoming the home for additional recipes that we
> miss
> from OE-Classic that don't have another obvious layer to go into, and this
> is
> a good thing. However I think that meta-oe is already in a state where
> quite a
> few people feel the new structure is not working for them.
>
> As I see it, meta-oe is trying provide the following:
>
>  1) Additional recipes that are not in OE-Core
>
>  2) Additional functionality for OE-Core recipes that we can't enable in
> OE-
> Core itself (e.g. enabling postgres support in Qt) - mostly just a
> side-effect
> of #1
>
>  3) A place to preserve old versions of recipes that have been removed from
> OE-Core in favour of newer versions
>
>  4) Newer less-well tested versions of recipes
>
> I think what most people want when they enable meta-oe in their layer
> configuration is #1, and it's probably OK to get #2 along with it. They do
> not
> however expect versions of toolchains, eglibc or other fairly fundamental
> bits
> and pieces that might cause their build to fail when everything worked fine
> just building with OE-Core (#4). Equally I expect there will be some people
> who want just #3 and nothing else.
>
> I understand there is significant value in providing all of these things, I
> just think we shouldn't be trying to do them all in one largely indivisible
> layer. In our new layer structure we should be able to find a way to split
> the
> metadata so that people who want any combination can still have what we
> have
> in meta-oe today, and yet those who just want one of them don't get
> unexpected
> build failures or older/newer versions being built.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
>
> [1] http://cgit.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded/tree/meta-oe
>
> --
>
> Paul, all,

I feel this is a good proposal.
We might also attempt to define some criteria on what should go in and what
not.

Some more finegrained comments:

#3 should probably not be needed (it might be as a temporary transient).
I would hope/expect that meta-oe builds with oe-core and what is in there.
If a distro needs an older version of something (for whatever reason) it
better should be in the distro overlay.
Ditto if a board needs an older version.
(btw and if it is for historical reasons: the old versions can always be
retrieved from git).
(Note that I see no problem if there is a drastic change that needs some
work in meta-oe where an old version is kept as a transient to keep things
working while working to move to the new version)

Wrt #4: that is indeed something that people do not always expect. I feel a
better place for these newer/less-stable recipes would be a oe-core-next
branch or tree (assuming we are talking about oe-core recipes)

Best regards, Frans