[oe] Splitting meta-oe?

[akuster808]

On 02/28/2018 01:33 PM, Andreas Müller wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 6:17 PM, Alexander Kanavin
> <alexander.kanavin at linux.intel.com> wrote:
>> On 02/20/2018 12:45 PM, Burton, Ross wrote:
>>> Is now a good time to talk about splitting up meta-oe?  Some layers are
>>> actively developed and maintained (one example: meta-python), others are
>>> basically bitrotting and only get touched when something else causes them
>>> to break world builds (one example: meta-gnome).  I've long felt that
>>> meta-oe should be split up and the high quality layers managed in their
>>> own
>>> repositories so patches to them don't get held up by breakage in other
>>> sub-layers.
>>>
>>> Another advantage of splitting out the high quality layers is that we'd
>>> like to look at running more community layers through the Yocto
>>> autobuilder, and granular layers make that easier to manage.
>>>
>>> Comments?
>>
>> I just read the whole discussion (been on holiday), and while it seems that
>> splitting layers is seen as too heavy-handed, there is still something that
>> I believe should be done: a policy for blacklisting and removing
>> unmaintained recipes. Such a policy should be:
>>
>> a) clearly defined;
>> b) consistently applied.
>>
>> If that is in place, I, as an oe-core maintainer, would be a lot more
>> willing to contribute to meta-oe, knowing that recipes I contribute to (for
>> example by fixing issues caused by changes in oe-core) are, in fact, used
>> and taken care of otherwise. However, me endlessly fixing well obsolete
>> gnome2 stuff is just a fast track to not caring anymore.
> Isn't there somebody outside willing/capable/having enough time to
> move to gnome 3? This would be the best way to end the gnome2 bit-rott
> discussion and we'd have a desktop which is commonly used and
> addresses touch input. I tried that many years ago but the blocker at
> that time was gobject-introspection. These times are over for long. I
> wanted to start this during christmas-holiday but then my
> music-machine turned into more efforts than expected... For those
> still wanting what's left over from gnome2 currently (for me gedit - I
> don't like gedit3 search..) there is at least the mate-project an
> alternative.
>> So, which recipes are unmaintained?
>>
>> 1. Badly out of date compared to upstream development. Say, one year or more
>> between version provided by meta-oe master, and latest version released by
>> upstream.
> For example: What if something changes upstream that makes it very
> difficult or impossible for us to follow? Have no recent example for
> that but I think if gobject-introspection would have worked for us
> years ago, gnome2 would not be an issue anymore. You mention below
> that in this case a patch has to be sent out. A comment in the recipe
> would be good enough?
>> 2. Recipes which fail to build, and the situation hasn't been addressed, in,
>> say, six months.
> Yes: recipes not building are useless. Martin has done blacklisting in
> the late phase of his maintainer-ship. The only question I have here:
> Does not build mean for all archs or for just .. how many?

See the "State of the world" emails. It included the Arches and packages
failing.

- armin
>> Once either of these is established, the recipe enters a grace period before
>> it is removed. Any objection to such removal should come with a patch that
>> addresses the reason for it.
>>
> I remember the times of mass blacklisting (if I remember correct last
> was recipe-specific-sysroot) this was
>
> * kind of alarm for me for those recipes I need / take care of
> * easy grep'able for those recipes I thought 'why not - I have some
> spare cycles left over'
>
> So my opinion:
> * Recipes not building for a time to be defined: 1. blacklist and
> after x month -> remove
> * Recipes outdated: same 1.blacklist (undo if somebody complains with
> patch commenting in the recipe why not to remove) 2. remove after a
> time period to be defined
>
> Problem/Challenge:
> The way this was handled in the past was an extra duty put on
> maintainer's shoulders. If somebody could create (or is there
> something already?) a script for that and append it to world builds...
>
> Andreas