Re: [PATCH 1/2] qt4(-embedded).inc: create variables to ease overriding

[Paul Eggleton <paul.eggleton@linux.intel.com>]

On Tuesday 22 May 2012 16:10:52 Andreas Oberritter wrote:
> No need to hurry. I'll keep using my patch in my denzil-based branch
> anyway, because denzil-next is unlikely to include either variant.
> 
> I'm not a big fan of PACKAGECONFIG. Its syntax is hard to read and hard
> to write, maybe unless you're the inventor of it.

Can you suggest an alternative syntax that we could have consistent across 
multiple recipes and handles adding/removing DEPENDS as well as configure 
options? That is what it attempts to provide.
 
> Looking for users of PACKAGECONFIG in OE-Core denzil, I saw it's used in
> only 6 recipes. Even less in meta-openembedded (exactly 1). It looks
> like it's not going to get adopted by many. So your statement about
> taking away newly created variables in the near future is not
> necessarily going to become true.

It's still pretty new. Besides, we haven't exactly gone out on a program of 
adding it everywhere there is a configuration option for something - we only 
add it on an as-needed basis.

> Besides that, introducing a new PACKAGECONFIG variable for Qt, that
> includes new flags for basically everything already in QT_CONFIG_FLAGS,
> doesn't seem to be an improvement.

It is now our standard way of switching on and off features particularly where 
those features imply a change to DEPENDS.
 
> Furthermore, as I understand it, PACKAGECONFIG handles only simple
> on/off switches, but QT_CONFIG_FLAGS has switches for
> on/off/plugin/system etc., and not everything you can build into qt can
> be built as a plugin and vice versa, so the resulting set of
> PACKAGECONFIG flags will likely become quite huge in order to be able to
> express all options.

So this might present a problem I agree. Perhaps PACKAGECONFIG is not going to 
work here. I dislike however that we would have the ability to configure these 
options and yet there is no management of DEPENDS to match.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre