Re: [PATCH 1/1] base-files: do_install.sigdata: remove the depends on DATE

[Mark Hatle <mark.hatle@windriver.com>]

On 3/27/14, 1:13 PM, Martin Jansa wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:53:20AM -0700, Chris Larson wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 10:49 AM, Richard Purdie <
>> richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 2014-03-27 at 10:21 -0700, Chris Larson wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 8:10 PM, Robert Yang
>>>> <liezhi.yang@windriver.com> wrote:
>>>>          If we run "bitbake -S base-files" today, and re-run it
>>>>          tomorrow with
>>>>          nothing changed, we would see that the do_install.sigdata
>>>>          changes
>>>>          because of:
>>>>
>>>>          do_intall -> do_install_basefilesissue -> DISTRO_VERSION ->
>>>>          DATE
>>>>
>>>>          We had set:
>>>>          IMAGE_NAME[vardepsexclude] += "DATETIME"
>>>>          in meta/conf/bitbake.conf, we can set a similar line in
>>>>          base-files_3.0.14.bb to fix the problem.
>>>>
>>>>          [YOCTO #6032]
>>>>
>>>>          Signed-off-by: Robert Yang <liezhi.yang@windriver.com>
>>>>
>>>> Wont't this mean base-files wouldn't be rebuilt when the day changes?
>>>> This seems problematic to me. I think this is a legitimate case for a
>>>> checksum change. If the distro version changes due to the date
>>>> changing, and the base-files includes the distro version in the issue
>>>> file, then we'd *want* base-files to rebuild to ensure the issue file
>>>> is correct, otherwise it'd be inaccurate, no?
>>>>
>>> I'm torn on this. Package feed creators probably don't want a package
>>> feed where the package changes daily but I can see this from both sides,
>>> I have often wondered why my build was rebuilding base-files...
>>
>>
>> Perhaps we should either not use DATE/TIME in the distro version at all, or
>> have a variable which is the current date, and a variable which locks to
>> the date of the creation of the TMPDIR but doesn't change after that, or
>> something, as a more persistent build environment identifier to use for
>> such cases. *shrug*
>
> I think that the DATE specific part should be moved to separate recipe
> which will clearly indicate it's just "build version".
>
> I'm using shr-version recipe which just puts file in sysconfdir so it's
> not so surprising to see shr-version recipe being rebuilt everyday and I
> still know when the user last updated from feed.
>
> It's also useful to pull such recipe into image by IMAGE_INSTALL not
> through packagegroup (as otherwise the packagegroup could be rebuilt
> every day as well - at least until runtime deps for packagegroups were
> excluded in signature handler).

This is a good place where separating version/build information from the 
basefiles makes a lot of sense.  Rebuilding one small package daily for the 
purpose of knowing you are "current" is a lot better then potentially screwing 
with the base-files on the system (unless they've been changed and need to be 
updated.)

--Mark