Re: [OE-core] [PATCH v3 3/3] bitbake-config-build: add a plugin for config fragments

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, 2024-12-10 at 14:05 +0100, Alexander Kanavin via
lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 at 18:00, Richard Purdie
> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > Firstly, I think the "(disabled)" is the wrong way to show that
> > information. It would be more compact and perhaps more usable to
> > show
> > the elements sorted into two sections along the lines of:
> > 
> > """
> > Enabled fragments:
> > 
> > selftest/test-fragment - This is a configuration fragment intended
> > for testing in oe-selftest context
> > 
> > Unused fragments:
> > 
> > selftest/more-fragments-here/test-another-fragment - This is a
> > second configuration fragment intended for testing in oe-selftest
> > context
> > """
> 
> This is fine, I can fix it.

Right, this on is not too hard to implement from a code perspective.

> 
> > Secondly when listing the fragments, the current approach does lend
> > itself to cut and past but also doesn't group neatly. For example
> > you
> > could do something like:
> > 
> > selftest/
> >   test-fragment - This is a configuration fragment intended for
> > testing in oe-selftest context
> >   more-fragments-here/test-another-fragment - This is a second
> > configuration fragment intended for testing in oe-selftest context
> 
> If we start going down this path, we might as well write an
> interactive curses UI, and keep the command line output 'flat' like it
> is now. I'm also not sure what is the best approach, we'd need to take
> fragments into practical use and accumulate a sizable amount of them
> perhaps. Such things can be easily tweaked from experience.

Having experimented with curses UIs, they're a pain and don't really do
what you hope/think they would.

Some of the other tools like bitbake-layers do "group" output for ease
of usability so this is something our commandline tools do to some
extent already. I'm not saying we have to do this, or do it now. I did
want to at least put the idea out there to see what people's thoughts
were.

I just know from experience that showing users large blocks of text
without something to guide the eye can make them harder to use.

We can leave this part for now...

Cheers,

Richard