Re: [OE-core] [PATCH 3/3] meta: Manual override fixes

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

On Wed, 2021-07-28 at 14:21 -0700, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 1:54 PM Richard Purdie
> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 2021-07-28 at 13:43 -0700, Andre McCurdy wrote:
> > 
> > > Since the script will be reused many times for many private layers I'd
> > > say making it as robust as possible is a worthy goal.
> > 
> > Well, sure. I have spent days on it and improved it several times over compared
> > to what it did do. I have it working for 10,000 cases in OE-Core with around 40
> > exceptions which I didn't think was too bad. I felt I'd reached the point of
> > diminishing returns with it. As with most things, we can improve it and patches
> > are welcome.
> 
> Unfortunately those most affected by shortcomings in the script are
> probably also those least likely to submit patches for it. Just as
> those most affected by the new recipe syntax were probably not reading
> oe-arch when you proposed the change and asked for feedback. They will
> instead find out about it months or years from now when they discover
> their meta layers don't work when they try using a new release of OE.
> At that point a lot of them will just shug and keep on using 3.1
> LTS...
> 
> > I'm more worried that the patterns of metadata in the wild may be quite different
> > to what we've trained the script with in OE-Core too, that may be a much more
> > important issue.
> 
> Yes, that's a concern too. Looking at the script now it seems to be
> mostly a long list of exceptions. The chances of it working well on
> layers you haven't considered don't look too good.

I'm not sure that is entirely true/fair. The bulk of the exceptions are for 
python function/variable names and OE-Core and bitbake itself have a much 
higher fraction of code like that than most layers do.

I am interested in real world feedback on layers people can test it against
though to see how much of an issue that really is.

The goal here isn't 100% perfect automated conversion (in which case bitbake 
could just markup things internally) but to help people convert layers with
minimal pain.

Cheers,

Richard