[Buildroot] Buildroot defconfig issues

[Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout@mind.be>]

On 12/02/2021 09:24, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Fri, 12 Feb 2021 09:17:53 +0100
> Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout@mind.be> wrote:
> 
>>  I propose to just remove this defconfig. We're not really happy with those
>> non-minimal defconfigs, right. I think it only makes sense to keep something
>> like that if there really is something board-specific in there, which is not the
>> case here I think.
> 
> Well, we've got several of these "development" defconfigs for
> Atmel/Microchip platforms:
> 
> at91sam9x5ek_dev_defconfig
> at91sam9x5ek_mmc_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d27_som1_ek_mmc_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d2_xplained_mmc_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d3_xplained_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d3_xplained_mmc_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d4_xplained_dev_defconfig
> atmel_sama5d4_xplained_mmc_dev_defconfig
> microchip_sam9x60ek_mmc_dev_defconfig
> microchip_sama5d27_wlsom1_ek_mmc_dev_defconfig
> 
> There was quite some debate back then on whether we wanted them or not
> in upstream Buildroot. Microchip has its own BR2_EXTERNAL layer at
> https://github.com/linux4sam/buildroot-external-microchip with a bunch
> of other defconfigs.
> 
> But Arnout, I thought you were inclined to having "demo" defconfigs in
> Buildroot upstream. Have you changed your mind ?

"demo", yes. Like qt5we. It's good to have one defconfig which adds qt5we
because otherwise that package hardly ever gets tested (it has so many
dependencies that it's very unlikely to get built in the autobuilders). Also the
other _qt5_ configs make sense, because it can be quite hard to select the
correct graphical stuff for a specific board - the qt5 part is not really
needed, but it's a nice way of showing something actually working rather than
simply building.

 But the _dev_ things simply select a bunch of packages that are useful for
development. It's not at all necessarily the set of tools that any particular
developer will actually use, and it's not very helpful for testing some specific
package, and there's nothing specific for that platform in it.

 It's possible that I'm a bit changing my mind here, because I didn't realize
that last bit before. And for sure: if such a config is giving us pain (e.g., it
doesn't build :-) then rather than spend time on investigating, I'd want to just
remove it!

 Regards,
 Arnout