Re: [docs] [PATCH] dev-manual: correct inaccurate explanation of buildhistory setup

["Antonin Godard" <antonin.godard@bootlin.com>]

Hi,

On Fri Jun 12, 2026 at 10:50 AM CEST, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>
> At the moment, the introduction to the buildhistory class suggests
> that the developer needs to add the line:
>
>   BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1"
>
> to their config file. Obviously, this is untrue since it is already
> set to that by default in the buildhistory.bbclass file so remove that
> directive but clarify that there is a reason why they might want to
> subsequently set it zero.
>
> Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
>
> ---
>
> diff --git a/documentation/dev-manual/build-quality.rst b/documentation/dev-manual/build-quality.rst
> index c3c7ccbb2..3c1dca2a2 100644
> --- a/documentation/dev-manual/build-quality.rst
> +++ b/documentation/dev-manual/build-quality.rst
> @@ -33,13 +33,10 @@ The remainder of this section describes the following:
>  Enabling and Disabling Build History
>  ====================================
>
> -Build history is disabled by default. To enable it, add the following
> -:term:`INHERIT` statement and set the :term:`BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT` variable to
> -"1" at the end of your ``conf/local.conf`` file found in the
> -:term:`Build Directory`::
> +Build history is disabled by default. To enable it, simply add the following
> +:term:`INHERIT` statement at the end of your ``conf/local.conf`` file::

While at it, replace

"""
at the end of your ``conf/local.conf`` file::
"""

to

"""
in a :term:`configuration file`::
"""

>
>     INHERIT += "buildhistory"
> -   BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT = "1"
>
>  Enabling build history as
>  previously described causes the OpenEmbedded build system to collect
> @@ -52,9 +49,27 @@ build output information and commit it as a single commit to a local
>     particularly for images, and increases the amount of disk space used
>     during the build.
>
> -You can disable build history by removing the previous statements from
> +You can disable build history by removing that INHERIT statement from

s/INHERIT/:term:`INHERIT`/

>  your ``conf/local.conf`` file.

Also replace local.conf like above.

>
> +.. note::
> +
> +   To enable basic build history, you need only add the line::

s/you need only/you need to/

> +
> +      INHERIT += "buildhistory"
> +
> +   to your local configuration, but the subsequent generation of that history
> +   is actually controlled by the :term:`BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT` variable
> +   which is, by default, already conditionally set to "1" in the
> +   ``buildhistory.bbclass`` file::
> +
> +      BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT ?= "1"
> +
> +   so there is no need for you to set that variable yourself. However, as
> +   you will see later in this section, you can inherit that class file
> +   yet set that variable to zero if you don't want the history but
> +   still want some of the other information produced by this feature.

This note seems too long. You just want to say that you can set
BUILDHISTORY_COMMIT to 0, and that it disables commits for the history while
keeping other information such as image content and so on. Just say that.

Antonin