Re: [OE-core] coding style question about obsoleted packages

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

On Wed, 2020-04-29 at 05:28 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   just noticed that, in master branch, kbd recipe quite reasonably
> distinguishes itself from the much, much older console-tools package
> thusly:
> 
>   RREPLACES_${PN} = "console-tools"
>   RPROVIDES_${PN} = "console-tools"
>   RCONFLICTS_${PN} = "console-tools"
> 
> all perfectly reasonable as long as console-tools actually existed as
> a recipe, but it was deleted some months ago:
> 
>   commit 320319f24dd1be300bc89c52b97d1703eab83029
>   Author: Alexander Kanavin <alex.kanavin@gmail.com>
>   Date:   Wed Nov 20 14:44:51 2019 +0100
> 
>     console-tools: remove the recipe
> 
>     The last release of this was in 2002(!), kbd is the modern,
>     supported alternative.
> 
> and as best i can tell, there are no references to console-tools in
> the numerous layers i have checked out. under the circumstances,
> then,
> while it doesn't hurt to have that info above in the kbd recipe, is
> there any value?
> 
>   more generally, when a recipe is truly removed and obsoleted,
> should
> it be part of the removal process to get rid of such references to it
> to avoid slowly-accumulating cruft in the code base?

It in theory has implications for anyone doing on device upgrades so is
needed for that. We need to let this sit for at least a release or two
so people can transition, then it can be removed.

Cheers,

Richard