Re: [PATCH RFC] docker: automatic dependencies for dockerfiles

[John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com>]

On 10/7/19 12:12 PM, Alex Bennée wrote:
> 
> John Snow <jsnow@redhat.com> writes:
> 
>> This is a demo for using makefile dependencies for image requisites.
>> Honestly, I don't like it -- Makefile sorcery is a bit beyond my
>> comprehension.
>>
>> This is as near as I could stab, and it has the unfortunate requisite
>> that it will generate all of the *.d files at first run and not in an
>> on-demand way. Boo.
>>
>> But, I wanted to raise the point that manually managing the variables
>> is not long-term viable -- we should manage them automatically if we
>> can.
> 
> I think this gets more complicated when we want to handle multiple host
> architectures as well. We might for example have a final image that is
> based of a native docker base in one case and a linux-user docker base
> in another.
> 

Indeed!

>> As far as "partial" images vs "full" images, we should manage this
>> too; perhaps by subdirectory on the dockerfiles -- that way these
>> won't get out of date, either.
> 
> I'll have an experiment with different layouts and see.
> 

Yeah, no sweat -- this was just a quick experiment to see if I could do
it. I figured I would post my work, but I struggle with Makefile magic.

It left me wondering if we could start using Meson build systems in this
sub-tree; but maybe Meson is not well suited to this kind of "building".
I dunno. I'll experiment with this more another day when I have more
time to look at the test infrastructure.

Thanks for taking a look, anyway!

--js