Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH] package/pkg-generic: don't exclude virtual packages from packages list

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>]

On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 11:00:14 +0200
"Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr> wrote:

> Currently, with a configuration with an internal toolchain, and no other
> package is selected [0], especially when one wants to generate an SDK or
> a pre-built, pre-installed toolchain, running 'make' will only build
> glibc (and its dependencies), and not the full toolchain, as one would
> have expected, so there would be no host-final-gcc.
> 
> The reason is that 'toolchain' is a virtual package, so it is excluded
> from PACKAGES, the list of packages enabled in the configuration. so it
> is not a dependency of target-finalize, and so nothing pulls it in the
> build.
> 
> The reason for excluding virtual packages from that list is not obvious.
> 
> When virtual packages were introduced in 743982441201 (packages: add
> infrastructure for virtual packages), there was no BR2_PACKAGE_FOO
> symbol for virtual packages (but there was BR2_PACKAGE_HAS_FOO), so
> there was no telling that the virtual package was enabled, like we had
> for the other kinds of packages (normal, bootloader, toolchain, or linux
> kernel).
> 
> That caused issues, so in f674c428c2ef (core/pkg-virtual: do not check
> they are neabled [sic]), and then 3e1b33a5349b (pkg-generic: improve
> incorrectly used package detection), we explicitly excluded the virtual
> packages from causing a build failure when something depended on them,
> as we could not yet now whether a virtual package was actually enabled
> or not.
> 
> Then, in 842ba7eceffb (pkg-generic: fix rdepends and phony targets of
> virtual packages), we eventually associated a virtual package to is
> BR2_PACKAGE_HAS_FOO, which allows treating virtual packages like the
> other kinds of packages. There, we explicitly kept virtual packages out
> of the list, though (the reasoning was that virtual packages install
> nothing in host/ or target/, so they do not directly contribute to the
> final content, so we do not need to rsync them, so this was an
> optimisation).
> 
> However, virtual packages are in fact actual generic packages, and it is
> possible for virtual packages to actually provide content for the final
> image. Even though we do not have any virtual package that has actual
> _INSTALL_CMDS, we still have udev that provides a user for example;
> virtual packages in br2-external trees may also very well provide
> install commands (e.g. to install files common to their various
> implementations).
> 
> So, there is currently no technical reason to exclude virtual packages
> from PACKAGES, the list of packages enabled in the configuration.
> 
> Drop the excluding condition, and always add enabled package, whatever
> their kind, to the list of enabled packages.
> 
> [0] defconfig to reproduce the issue:
>     BR2_INIT_NONE=y
>     BR2_SYSTEM_BIN_SH_NONE=y
>     # BR2_PACKAGE_BUSYBOX is not set
>     # BR2_PACKAGE_IFUPDOWN_SCRIPTS is not set
>     # BR2_TARGET_ROOTFS_TAR is not set
> 
> Signed-off-by: Yann E. MORIN <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
> ---
>  package/pkg-generic.mk | 2 --
>  1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)

Applied to master, thanks.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com
_______________________________________________
buildroot mailing list
buildroot@buildroot.org
https://lists.buildroot.org/mailman/listinfo/buildroot