Re: Conflicting providers for ssh/sshd (dropbear and openssh)

[Phil Blundell <pb@pbcl.net>]

On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 10:56 +0200, Koen Kooi wrote:
> That's already the case now. The problem is the PROVIDES overlap since
> the Poky people decided a distro could only have one true ssh
> implementation instead of choosing it per image. So if your distro
> doesn't set the PREFERRED_PROVIDER_sshd you get those nagging messages
> during parsing that scare users and make consultants rich.
> 
> OE .dev isn't a lot better with the misguided DISTRO_SSH_DAEMON, but
> at least it doesn't show those nag messages.

Fundamentally I think it is just a bug in bitbake that it makes such a
fuss about overlapping PROVIDES.  It's not unreasonable for both openssh
and dropbear to be PROVIDEing something like virtual/ssh-daemon (and
indeed RPROVIDEing an equivalent) but, as you say, any given distro is
perfectly entitled to want to build both of them and ship them in
different images and/or feeds.

I guess what bitbake is really trying to warn about is recipes which
will install conflicting files into the sysroot.  Obviously in a future
utopia of per-recipe sysroot construction this would be a non-issue, but
even with today's level of technology I think it would be fairly easy
for us to detect when a collision actually happens and issue a sensible
diagnostic at that point.  That would allow the offending ERROR to be
removed without causing any real regression.

p.