[Buildroot] [RFC 0/3] Adding software stacks

[Angelo Compagnucci]

Dear Arnout Vandecappelle

2017-10-11 23:38 GMT+02:00 Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be>:
>  Hi Angelo,
>
> On 10-10-17 22:43, Angelo Compagnucci wrote:
>> Software stacks are a way to define a group of options that should be used together and they are orthogonal to configs: a software stack can indeed be shared among several configs.
>
>  Wow, you always come with the innovative ideas, don't you?

Could you point me where I said it's innovative?

>  We discussed such a feature before, but never came up with an elegant way to do
> it, and that was better than just calling merge_config.sh.

I'm only proposing my POV.

>> Having a stack system like the one envisioned in this patch series make possible to do something like this:
>>
>> make imx6-sabresd_defconfig; make mesa3d-etnaviv_stack qt5-fb_stack qt5-demos_stack; make
>
>  So yeah, is this really better than
>
> ./utils/merge_config.sh configs/imx6-sabresd_defconfig
> stacks/mesa3d-etnaviv_stack stacks/qt5-fb_stack stacks/qt5-demos_stack; make
>
> ? Yes, it is significantly shorter, but you can at least use tab-completion.

Well, the difference is that on the mailing list or the documentation
you can say "there's a defined way in buildroot to do this thing"
instead of "you should merge your configurations manually". Explicit
is better than implicit!

>  That said, I'm not absolutely opposed to the idea. But I'm not convinced either.

It's not a problem for me to have a makefile target or not, I really
want to know if it's an acceptance to the idea and if I should spend
some time to refine it. If it's a no go, please tell me!

>  Adding stacks, on the other hand, seems like a worthwhile endeavour.
>
>
>> In this way we can declutter redundant configs (ex: imx6-sabresd_qt5_defconfig) and decouple software packages side related symbols from hardware related defconfigs.
>
>  Not the best example, because imx6-sabresd_qt5_defconfig contains quite a few
> board-specific adaptions: a kconfig fragment and a rootfs overlay. And of course
> increasing the ext2 rootfs size.
>
>  A better example would be atmel_sama5d4_xplained_dev_defconfig which is purely
> a collection of packages.

It was an example. Obviously for the sama5d4, we can have a stack for
each board variant to be merged with a base one.

>
>
>  Regards,
>  Arnout
>
>
>>
>>
>> Angelo Compagnucci (3):
>>   support/kconfig/merge_config.sh: merge also buildroot config files
>>   Makefile: add handling of software stacks
>>   stacks: add a bunch of stacks
>>
>>  Makefile                        | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
>>  stacks/lamp_stack               | 10 ++++++++++
>>  stacks/mesa3d-etnaviv_stack     |  7 +++++++
>>  stacks/qt5-demos_stack          |  7 +++++++
>>  stacks/qt5-fb_stack             | 11 +++++++++++
>>  support/kconfig/merge_config.sh | 16 +++++++++++++++-
>>  6 files changed, 88 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>>  create mode 100644 stacks/lamp_stack
>>  create mode 100644 stacks/mesa3d-etnaviv_stack
>>  create mode 100644 stacks/qt5-demos_stack
>>  create mode 100644 stacks/qt5-fb_stack
>>
>
> --
> Arnout Vandecappelle                          arnout at mind be
> Senior Embedded Software Architect            +32-16-286500
> Essensium/Mind                                http://www.mind.be
> G.Geenslaan 9, 3001 Leuven, Belgium           BE 872 984 063 RPR Leuven
> LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoutvandecappelle
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