Re: Can we drop eglibc-utils from LIBC_DEPENDENCIES?

[Darren Hart <dvhart@linux.intel.com>]

On 12/16/2011 01:07 PM, Koen Kooi wrote:
> 
> Op 16 dec. 2011, om 19:30 heeft Darren Hart het volgende geschreven:
> 
>> I'm working on a minimal distro definition, and found that eglibc-utils
>> pulls in bash (needed for tzconfig and xtrace apparently)
> 
> My first thought is: fix the bashisms in those scripts, I bet ubuntu/fedora/arch/gentoo have patches for that,


Agreed, this would be a good thing to do. However, I still shouldn't
need to include this in a "tiny" distribution.


>> which pulls in
>> gettext, which requires wchar support. I'd like to remove eglibc-utils
>> from my distro definition. I could override the default I suspect, but I
>> wonder if eglibc-utils should be made an optional package that distro
>> definitions, images, or users should specifically add if needed?
>>
>> The relevant bit of code appears to be:
>>
>> meta/conf/distro/include/tclibc-eglibc.inc
>>
>> LIBC_DEPENDENCIES = "libsegfault \
>> 		     eglibc \
>>    		     eglibc-dbg \
>>    		     eglibc-dev \
>>    		     eglibc-utils \
>>    		     eglibc-thread-db \
>>    		     eglibc-localedata-i18n \
>>    		     eglibc-gconv-ibm850 \
>>    		     eglibc-gconv-cp1252 \
>>    		     eglibc-gconv-iso8859-1 \
>>    		     eglibc-gconv-iso8859-15 \
>>    		     locale-base-en-us \
>>    		     locale-base-en-gb "
>>
>> eglibc-dbg and eglibc-dev also seem like they could be made optional.
>>
>> Thoughts? Would anyone object to me removing at least eglibc-utils from
>> LIBC_DEPENDENCIES?
> 
> I did a little digging:
> 
> koen@dominion:/OE/tentacle/sources/openembedded-core$ git grep LIBC_DEPENDENCIES
> meta/conf/distro/include/tclibc-eglibc.inc:LIBC_DEPENDENCIES = "libsegfault \
> meta/conf/distro/include/tclibc-uclibc.inc:LIBC_DEPENDENCIES = "\
> meta/recipes-core/tasks/task-core-nfs.bb:GLIBC_DEPENDENCIES = "glibc-utils"
> meta/recipes-core/tasks/task-core-nfs.bb:RRECOMMENDS_task-core-nfs-server_append_libc-glibc = " ${GLIBC_DEPENDENCIES}"
> meta/recipes-core/tasks/task-core-standalone-sdk-target.bb:    ${LIBC_DEPENDENCIES} \
> 
> So it's only used for debug and/or SDK uses. I am going to argue that if you're going to support debug and SDK you're not minimal anymore and can live with bash/gettext/etc.

Well, nfs isn't SDK only, there are valid deployment uses for that. But
otherwise, agreed.

> 
> Since I was bored I dug up an OE-classic:
> 
> koen@dominion:/OE/org.openembedded.dev$ git blame  recipes/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000  1) DESCRIPTION = "Packages for a standalone  SDK or external toolchain"
> [..]
> 9bff47f7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Tom Rini  2008-11-26 13:16:21 -0500  8) GLIBC_PKGS = "\
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000  9)     glibc \
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000 10)     glibc-dbg \
> 86fa8521 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Tom Rini  2009-02-04 02:07:47 -0500 11)     virtual-libc-dev \
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000 12)     glibc-utils \
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000 13)     libsegfault \
> 749310c7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Koen Kooi 2008-07-07 21:24:38 +0000 14)     glibc-thread-db \
> f18a05e2 recipes/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb  (Tom Rini  2010-02-09 16:43:45 -0700 15) "
> 9bff47f7 packages/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb (Tom Rini  2008-11-26 13:16:21 -0500 16) 
> edd3a1de recipes/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb  (Tom Rini  2011-01-18 17:56:52 -0700 17) LIBC_PKGS_libc-glibc = "${GLIBC_PKGS}"
> edd3a1de recipes/tasks/task-sdk-bare.bb  (Tom Rini  2011-01-18 17:56:52 -0700 18) LIBC_PKGS_libc-uclibc = "uclibc uclibc-dev uclibc-thread-db"

Was this list used in the same way as LIBC_DEPENDENCIES above?

> 
> So a few years ago that list of packages was only meant for SDK usage.
> 
> If you meant GLIBC_DEPENDENCIES (note the extra 'G'), then you need
> to
> check if they are still needed for NFS operation. If so I am going to
> argue that the dependencies should move to the recipes in question
> instead of hiding in the task.

Right, that makes sense.

> If it's just a convenience package go
> ahead and remove it, people wanting it can create a new task :)

Agreed as well.

I ran into an interesting issue. If I remove eglibc-utils from
LIBC_DEPENDENCIES, it still seems to be getting pulled in, as do bash
and gettext. Still digging to sort out why...

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center
Yocto Project - Linux Kernel