BBFILE_PRIORITY confusion

[Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>]

I'm building a multi-layered system, something like this:
   meta-manufacturer/...
   meta-platform/...

The idea is that we'll put any packages and support that are
useful for all platforms we make in meta-manufacturer/ and only
target platform specifics in meta-platform/

I had set BBFILE_PRIORITY=6 in meta-manufacturer/ and 7 in meta-platform/

Here's the confusion.  I originally had something like this for our internal
kernel packages:
   meta-manufacturer/packages/linux/linux-manufacturer_2.6.32.bb
   meta-platform/packages/linux/linux-manufacturer_2.6.28.bb
This was due to the fact that some other platform we make is already
using 2.6.32, but we still have some back at 2.6.28

Today, I tried to bring one of those platforms to 2.6.32, so I added
this (exactly as I have done for other platforms already running 2.6.32):
   meta-platform/packages/linux/linux-manufacturer_2.6.32.bbappend
initially leaving the linux-manufacturer_2.6.28.bb in place.

Much to my surprise, bitbake/poky never even reads the linux-manufacturer_2.6.32.bbappend
file!  This seems to be related to BBFILE_PRIORITY - when I swapped the
priorities around, it started to work.  While this gets me moving, I think
it's wrong - I may need at some point for this platform to be able to override
some manufacturer recipe, etc.

It seems to me that BBFILE_PRIORITY is a bit too zealous; barring any other
constraint, I should think that the 2.6.32 recipe should always take precedence.

Am I missing something here, or is it a bug?

-- 
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Gary Thomas                 |  Consulting for the
MLB Associates              |    Embedded world
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