[Buildroot] User-enabled host packages?

[Luca Ceresoli <luca@lucaceresoli.net>]

Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Le Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:00:49 +0200,
> Luca Ceresoli<luca@lucaceresoli.net>  a ?crit :
>
>> All of these examples are about tools that could generally be
>> downloaded, built and installed by each developer on their own
>> machine. Nevertheless any developer may benefit from having them
>> built inside buildroot: it would be more handy and quick to build
>> them, and also guarantee that the version used in buildroot is
>> somehow tested by other buildroot users.
>>
>> Moreover, some packages (such as omap-u-boot-utils for which I posted
>> a patch) have their own right of being inside buildroot because they
>> also contribute to building the BR images. Having a user option to
>> build them, even if they are not required for image generation, would
>> require little effort.
>>
>> So the big question is: do we want some host packages to be enabled
>> vie a user option?
>>
>> Where do we want these user options?
>> How about a newly created "Host tools" menu at top level?
>>
>> Does anybody have additional examples in favor or against?
>
> And also:
>
> If we decide to show /some/ host tools (but not all) in menuconfig, what
> is the boundary between host tools visible in menuconfig and those not
> visible in menuconfig ?

My opinion is that this would be based on user needs.

Whenever a BR user feels the need of adding a host tool here, he would
propose a patch to do so. If nobody will feel the need for host-foo,
then nobody will write a patch to add it.

That's what happens with regular packages, ain't that true?

Luca