Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH v3] docs/manual: use space-separated list for BR2_EXTERNAL

From: Thomas Petazzoni via buildroot <buildroot@buildroot.org>
To: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
Cc: "Fiona Klute \(WIWA\)" <fiona.klute@gmx.de>,
	Brandon Maier <Brandon.Maier@collins.com>,
	buildroot@buildroot.org
Subject: Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH v3] docs/manual: use space-separated list for BR2_EXTERNAL
Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2024 21:35:22 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20240905213522.2a476624@windsurf> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20240904205354.504964-1-yann.morin.1998@free.fr>

On Wed,  4 Sep 2024 22:53:54 +0200
"Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr> wrote:

> Specifying a list of br2-external trees is poorly documented, and the
> only example uses a colon to separate the br2-external paths.
> 
> Adding the support for colon-separated list is the biggest mistake that
> was made when introducing support for multiple br2-external [0]. Indeed,
> both space and colon can be used to separate entries in the list, and it
> is also possible to mix the two. However, internally, the list is stored
> as a space-separated list, and all the code will split on spaces.
> 
> So, using colons is odd.
> 
> Change the documentation to only mention using a space-separated list.
> 
> Of course, for backward compatibility, we keep the code as-is to accept
> a colon-separated list, but we just do not advertise it.
> 
> [0] in 20cd49738781 core: add support for multiple br2-external trees
> 
> Reported-by: Fiona Klute (WIWA) <fiona.klute@gmx.de>
> Reported-by: Brandon Maier <Brandon.Maier@collins.com>
> Signed-off-by: Yann E. MORIN <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
> Cc: Arnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind) <arnout@mind.be>
> 
> ---
> Note: support/scripts/br2-external has shellcheck issues; this commit
> does not try to address those on purpose, as it only adds a comment.

I'm afraid I'm personally finding that this not going in the right
direction. I didn't follow the discussions on v1 and v2, but on my
side, I would very, very, very much prefer to use colon as a separator
in the BR2_EXTERNAL variable. The PATH variable is like this, it works
well, and I believe the principle of least surprise should encourage us
to follow that and use colon as a separator.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com
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