[Buildroot] [PATCH 0/8 RFC] core: install foo-config scripts early in the PATH (branch yem/foo-config-in-PATH)

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>]

Yann,

On Mon, 21 Dec 2015 16:56:55 +0100, Yann E. MORIN wrote:

> This RFC series is an attempt at solving once and for all the problem we
> encounter with foo-config scripts.
> 
> The foo-config scripts are usually installed in staging, so are out of
> the PATH. However, most packages will just simply want to run them, and
> most are not configurable in where to look for that script and just
> expect to find them in the PATH.
> 
> Up until now, we used to patch those packages so that they accept an
> environment variable.
> 
> Arnout has suggested [0] that we move all the target-related foo-config
> scripts early in the PATH, so that they are found before the host ones
> and before the system ones.
> 
> This would allow us to drop our local patches, and to no longer set the
> custom FOO_CONFIG or the ac_cv_foo_config variables from our package
> recipes.

Unfortunately, I believe it doesn't work completely, because there are
some <foo>-config scripts that are not listed in <pkg>_CONFIG_SCRIPTS
because they are for some reason not compatible with the fixup that we
do. One example that comes to mind is python-*config (they are written
in shell but don't follow the usual pattern). I believe there might be
other cases as well.

Also, this solution doesn't solve the (admittedly unlikely) case of a
package calling /usr/bin/<foo>-config directly.

But I agree that it might solve many of the usual cases. I don't know
if the additional complexity of yet another special mechanism really
makes it worth it. I'd like to hear from Peter about this.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com