[Buildroot] Patchwork cleanup #7: submitter notification (feedback deadline: April 12)

[Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout@mind.be>]

On 31/03/14 19:12, Yann E. MORIN wrote:
> On 2014-03-31 10:58 +0200, Eric Jarrige spake thusly:
>> Hi Thomas,
>>
>>>> [v2,1/1] u-boot: allow to pass a custom configuration file
>>>> http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/276286/
>>>> Eric Jarrige
>>>> Yann Morin gave the feedback that this patch allows to overwrite
>>>> u-boot sources, rendering the declared license possible invalid.
>>
>> AFAIK this feature cannot overwrite the U-Boot license files and
>> according to the U-Boot licenses/README - "You can redistribute
>> U-Boot  and/or modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU
>> General Public License as published by the Free Software
>> Foundation."
>> So, it should not be an issue as long as the new config file respects
>> the terms of the version 2 of the GNU GPL license.
> 
> Hmm. There was maybe a bit of misunderstanding in what I said. Lemme
> quote it here again:
> 
>     ---
>     This is likely to overwrite a uboot source file
>     with a local file, so we won't be able to generate conpliant
>     legal-info when a custom comnfig file is used.
>     ---
> 
> What I meant was, when running 'make legal-info', we will end up copying
> the tarball of the sources, and we will miss this file (since Buildroot
> is not recreating the tarballs from the build dir, but just copies what
> was downloaded.)
> 
> So, this indeed can not overwrite the license file, but the sources in
> legal-info will not be the exact sources used to build U-Boot, so the
> legal-info will not create a compliant distribution.

 Note that this is the same for the kernel (although a bit more vague).
One could easily argue that the .config file is part of the
infrastructure needed to build the kernel (if you've ever tried to
reverse engineer a kernel config you will know what I mean). With U-Boot
it's more obvious because the config file is a header file, but the
semantics are really the same.

 That said, this shouldn't be a reason to do the wrong thing in U-Boot.

> 
> That's why I oppposed the change as-is.
> 
>>>> Eric: are you still interested in pursuing this patch? If so, I think
>>>> some further discussion on it should be ignited.
>>
>> I submitted this patch because I think it is generic enough to support
>> custom U-Boot configuration file for any board without using a patch
>> but I can understand I am the only one customizing bootloader for
>> my boards.
>> So feel free to reject this patch if there is no interest to manage
>> U-Boot configuration files within BuildRoot.
> 
> I did not say we did not want to be able to provide a custom config
> file. I just said we need to be careful on the impact.
> 
> However, I see that it is possible to declare post-legal-info hooks in
> packages.
> 
> So you could complement your patch with something like:
> 
>     UBOOT_CUSTOM_CONFIG = $(call qstrip,$(BR2_TARGET_UBOOT_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE))
>     ifneq ($(UBOOT_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE),)
>     define UBOOT_COPY_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE
>         $(INSTALL) -m 0644 -D $(UBOOT_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE) \
>                    $(SOMEWHERE)
>     endef
>     UBOOT_POST_LEGAL_INFO_HOOKS += UBOOT_COPY_CUSTOM_CONFIG_FILE
>     endif
> 
> I'll leave it to you as an exercise to find what $(SOMEWHERE) should be.
> ;-)

 Perhaps we should add legal-info infrastructure to support this kind of
thing. Something like

PKG_LICENSE_EXTRA_SOURCE = list of files relative to BR dir



 By the way, since this config.h copying is only useful for changing the
configuration of existing boards, I think this should be explicitly
mentioned in the help text of the option.

 BTW, note that this patch has become more useful since the deprecation
of BR2_TARGET_UBOOT_IPADDR and friends.


 Regards,
 Arnout
> 
> Regards,
> Yann E. MORIN.
> 


-- 
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
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