Bug 3662

Summary: Some layer-related variables need adding/editing in the variable glossary
Product: [Documentation] Reference Reporter: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday>
Component: handbookAssignee: Scott Rifenbark <srifenbark>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: Medium CC: bluelightning, poky.doc.watcher, poky.watcher, sgw
Version: 1.4   
Target Milestone: 1.4   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
URL: http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/yocto-docs/commit/?id=368055bc046277fe601ff3a64913044be0a15e6d
Whiteboard: 11 April 2013
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: ---

Description Robert P. J. Day 2012-12-29 10:46:12 UTC
Some (sort of) related observations about layer variables, all from variable glossary.

  First, example for BBMASK reads:

  "BBMASK = ".*/meta-ti/recipes-misc/"

I believe that initial ".*/" in the value is entirely superfluous; I've never needed it.

  Next, FILEXEXTRAPATHS encourages developer to prepend, as in:

  FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/${PN}:"

But some recipes simply set:

meta-angstrom/recipes-core/update-rc.d/update-rc.d_0.7.bbappend:FILESEXTRAPATHS := "${THISDIR}/${PN}"
meta-angstrom/recipes-core/sysvinit/sysvinit_2.88dsf.bbappend:FILESEXTRAPATHS := "${THISDIR}/${PN}"
meta-angstrom/recipes-core/base-files/base-files_3.0.14.bbappend:FILESEXTRAPATHS := "${THISDIR}/${PN}"

Readers who are checking out the source are going to be confused by that if they're going by what they read in the glossary.  Is it worth explaining that second possibility?  And whether it's encouraged?

  Finally, there's no mention of BB_DANGLINGAPPENDS_WARNONLY in the glossary, which turns out to be handy when layers get out of sync.  (This is actually currently true with meta-ti and oe-core WRT to a single recipe.)
Comment 1 Scott Rifenbark 2013-01-30 22:28:19 UTC
Solutions in place for all three of these issues.  Here are the links:

 * http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.4/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-BB_DANGLINGAPPENDS_WARNONLY

 * http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.4/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-FILESEXTRAPATHS

 * http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.4/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-BBMASK

 * http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.4/dev-manual/dev-manual.html#excluding-recipes-from-the-build

Please review them and comment.  If I don't hear back in a reasonable amount of time I will consider them okay and mark RESOLVED.

Thanks, 
Scott
Comment 2 Paul Eggleton 2013-04-11 14:23:03 UTC
I think the FILESEXTRAPATHS examples might not be correct, the first one uses prepend and then the next one, prefaced by a sentence mentioning you can add paths to the end, does not have any at all. I'm not sure if there is any point to that sentence and example, I think they probably ought to be removed. About the only addition to help understanding that I can think of would be to point out that the use of _prepend in bbappends is encouraged because it will allow multiple bbappends in different layers for the same recipe to extend the path correctly.

The rest of the entries look OK to me. Robert, you may wish to review these as well to confirm from your side.
Comment 3 Scott Rifenbark 2013-04-11 15:49:06 UTC
Updated the description to better focus on use from an append file and through prepending the variable.  

http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.4/ref-manual/ref-manual.html#var-FILESEXTRAPATHS

Scott