Re: [Openembedded-architecture] [oe] INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSES and WHITELIST_<license> usage

[<Mikko.Rapeli@bmw.de>]

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 04:20:01PM -0800, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 3:01 PM Saul Wold <Saul.Wold@windriver.com> wrote:
> >
> > Folks,
> >
> > I am working on a proposal to re-write how INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSES is used
> > and processed to possibly include a COMPATIBLE_LICENSES variable as
> > well, see PeterK's email [0]
> >
> > I am trying to determine the usage of WHITELIST_<license> which would be
> > used to override a license that might be listed in INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSES
> > variable.
> >
> > Randy and I have done a quick and dirty survey of a 100 or so layers
> > (thanks Randy) and could not find any real usage other than what's
> > currently in OE-Core for WHITELIST_GPL-3.0.
> >
> > If you are using WHITELIST_<license>, please let me reply with your usage.
> 
> Common case seems to be allowing gdb in debug builds of distros which
> are otherwise free of GPLv3 etc, e.g.
> 
>   https://github.com/MentorEmbedded/meta-mentor/blob/master/meta-mel/conf/distro/include/gdbserver-gplv3.inc
>   https://github.com/lgirdk/meta-mng/blob/ofw-2112.6/conf/distro/mng.conf

Exactly, I'm using this in a lot of projects.

Basically distro config has:

INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSE_append += " GPLv3 GPLv3+ LGPLv3 LGPLv3+"

and then various GPLv3 tools are allowed in build but not allowed to be
part of images:

WHITELIST_GPL-3.0 += "binutils"
PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "binutils-dbg binutils-staticdev binutils-dev binutils-doc binutils-locale libbfd binutils"

WHITELIST_GPL-3.0 += "gdb"
PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "gdb-sdktests-dbg gdb-sdktests gdbserver gdb-dbg gdb-staticdev gdb-dev gdb-doc gdb-locale gdb"

WHITELIST_GPL-3.0 += "rsync"
PACKAGE_EXCLUDE += "rsync-dbg rsync-staticdev rsync-dev rsync-doc rsync-locale rsync"

etc etc.

Use case is that developers can install additional GPLv3 licensed tooling if they
need to debug something, but product images don't include them by default.

Cheers,

-Mikko