RE: [docs] [PATCH 5/5] common-tasks.rst: rewrite the section about configuration templates

[Peter Kjellerstedt <peter.kjellerstedt@axis.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alexander Kanavin <alex.kanavin@gmail.com>
> Sent: den 13 september 2022 19:27
> To: Peter Kjellerstedt <peter.kjellerstedt@axis.com>
> Cc: docs@lists.yoctoproject.org; Alexander Kanavin <alex@linutronix.de>
> Subject: Re: [docs] [PATCH 5/5] common-tasks.rst: rewrite the section
> about configuration templates
> 
> On Tue, 13 Sept 2022 at 19:38, Peter Kjellerstedt
> <peter.kjellerstedt@axis.com> wrote:
> > I do not agree with this sentiment. If you create and distribute a setup
> > similar to Poky (which we do), why would we not change .templateconf to
> > point at our templates? This has been the documented method and the one
> > at least we use for our distribution. Where have you gotten the notion
> > that this is only to be used by OE-Core & Poky? It does not make sense.
> 
> First we need to find out, where the documentation section that sets
> the idea is coming from. It was written by Scott R. in 2014:
> https://git.yoctoproject.org/yocto-docs/commit/?id=c07fb7082fe08387bbc546b2a23620dedc7127b8
> from
> https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5895
> 
> I believe Scott misunderstood how the whole thing is supposed to work,
> and never road tested what he had written.

And I think he documented it exactly as it was intended to be used. See 
Paul Eggleton's comment:

  One way to do it is to set TEMPLATECONF (an environment variable, not a 
  bitbake variable) to point to a directory where the custom conf-notes.txt 
  can be found. In a repository this can be set within a .templateconf file - 
  hopefully we document that somewhere as well."

> You are free to continue to
> do the .templateconf rewrite, but I do not want to keep it in the
> docs.

Well, I would prefer to keep it in the docs since it is a documented 
feature and (at least was) the recommended way to do things. Maybe this 
has changed over the years, but if it is removed from the docs there is 
nothing stopping someone from removing it. And just because it does not 
match how you use Yocto, doesn't mean it isn't useful to others.

> It just isn't actually supported, unless you *also* provide a
> description and tools for 'creating a distribution setup similar to
> poky' and for doing the actual rewrite, and find someone else except
> you who's using it (I believe you do this with custom unpublished
> scripts?).

Nowadays we do, since we gave up on the limitations of static 
configurations in the layers. Our repo manifests decide which layers 
are fetched and those are the layers that will be added to the 
bblayers.conf.sample file.

> Besides, the only feature it gets you is not having to
> specify TEMPLATECONF when you have a default choice for it, which is
> useful, but should be made possible with the setup everyone *actually*
> uses, which is cloning poky, then adding layers next to it.

Well, that's what we do too using our repo manifests. It's just that repo 
has the support to copy files into the directories it sets up, which we 
use to copy in a .templateconf that overrides the one from poky. Anyone 
can do that if they have a defined set of layers they use.

> 
> Alex

//Peter