Re: [bitbake-devel][PATCH] cooker: Handle ImportError for websockets

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, 2025-02-25 at 09:22 +0100, Alexander Kanavin wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 at 17:07, Joshua Watt <jpewhacker@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I agree the error message could be better, and also that buildtools
> > should not be on by default. Perhaps something as simple as:
> > 
> >    bitbake-setup --buildtools
> > 
> > could enable it automatically? I think if there is such a simple
> > option like that it will make it pretty easy for the end users to
> > do
> > the right thing.
> 
> How do I put this politely? Such an option is not simple or easy for
> the end users, and I'm strongly against this sort of 'solution'. The
> problem is that you, me, RP and everyone else here are suffering from
> 'yocto experience bias', and such suggestions come from that bias. We
> know what to do when we see an error that can be resolved by
> installing buildtools and putting them into PATH.

There is a tricky balancing act here as you also have to give users a
reasonable expectation.

We're not a point and click GUI where every possible choice is going to
work, in fact the more you deviate from the tested paths, the larger
the number of issues you're going to have to handle yourself.

I therefore worry that setting an expectation of everything working,
just means when something does fail, users are going to more
surprised/upset.

Hiding host contamination issues behind the scenes means you could end
up with a generation of patch submitters who simply don't
test/know/care about that set of problems and I'm not sure the project
would benefit from that in the long run.

So whilst I do see your point, we do have to draw a line somewhere and
I'm not convinced always using buildtools is the right one as a
default, particularly if we want every day developers using the tool
too (which we do).

I'd also note that buildtools isn't "free", it does have download time,
space use and installation time.

Cheers,

Richard