Bug 3982

Summary: Autobuilder Conf version flag
Product: [Build System, Metadata & Runtime] OE-Core Reporter: Beth Flanagan <elizabeth.flanagan>
Component: configurationAssignee: Beth Flanagan <elizabeth.flanagan>
Status: VERIFIED FIXED QA Contact:
Severity: enhancement    
Priority: Medium+ CC: elizabeth.flanagan, jessica.zhang, sstncr
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: 1.5   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: No (bug/feature does not impact docs)
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 4690    

Description Beth Flanagan 2013-03-05 01:45:27 UTC 
I need a way to determine when a breaking change has occurred such that it would require additional flags within local.conf. This flag should exist in layer.conf.
My suggestion would be something like:

<layername>_ABCONF = "1"

This will allow the autobuilder infrastructure to have a checkpoint in time to know when a change is required to it's generated bblayers.conf or local/auto.conf

A perfect example of when this could have been useful is during the meta-yocto split. If it wasn't for an LCONF change at the time, I would have to go through a large ammount of effort to find if the bblayers should or shouldn't have meta-yocto-bsp in it.

I know this would require adoption by other layers, but it is really something we need to start tracking.
Comment 1 Richard Purdie 2013-06-20 21:04:51 UTC 
I think what has bothered me about this proposal is that this isn't an AB specific problem. I'd note that the core already has:

LAYERVERSION_core = "1"

so my proposal is that each layer should set such a version like this and that these versions should change when something incompatible happens (which includes changes which would affect the AB. Worst case we can make these major.minor version numbers.

So I'd suggest that someone puts out a proposal to the mailing list and then sends patches to a good set of core layers adding in the entries. We then just need to remember to use them.

Since I'm running out of time, I'm going to propose you can handle this from here Beth! :)
Comment 2 Beth Flanagan 2013-07-29 18:26:02 UTC 
This was hashed out on the oe-core list. We'll be using LAYERVERSION_* to determine breakage points for builders. We're already utilizing it to determine where to use qemuimagetest verses the new testing class.