Re: My thoughts on the future of OE?

[Mike Looijmans <mike.looijmans@topic.nl>]

On 05/01/2014 07:02 PM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> I was asked what I thought were things that needed discussion at OEDAM.
> Sadly I won't be there but I thought it might help to write down my
> thoughts in a few areas.
>
> Developer Workflow
> ------------------
>
> Firstly, I think the big piece we need to address as a project is
> "developer workflow" as this is where people are struggling using it.
>
> Unfortunately "developer workflow" means different things to different
> people? Which one do I mean then? I actually mean all of them. As some
> examples:

Just about fifteen minutes ago I was asked the question of "Yay, I could 
build a complete image for the board from scratch. Now how do I create 
and run a HelloWorld application on it?"

The answer I was forced to give him was still horribly complicated - 
create a repository, create a recipe, add the recipe, build the image, 
and loop until it works. That's the method I usually follow myself, but 
there are probably a few dozen others.

I expect him back in about an hour asking: "How can I quickly recompile 
and run after changing the code?"

My answer again is going to be disappointing to him again. I'll be 
forced to say he'll have to commit the change and build the image again.

After the weekend he'll ask me how to debug his code on target. The 
answer to that? Well, I have the whole weekend to think about that.


This is basically what scares away new developers. It's easy to compile 
an image, but it there isn't an obvious way to start developing your own 
application.


Don't get me wrong. OE is still by far the best cross-compile 
environment in existence.


Mike.