Bug 1518 - Usage of spawned terminals is inconsistent
Summary: Usage of spawned terminals is inconsistent
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: OE-Core
Classification: Build System, Metadata & Runtime
Component: core (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86 Multiple
: Medium major
Target Milestone: 1.2
Assignee: Richard Purdie
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Reported: 2011-09-22 15:40 UTC by Gary Thomas
Modified: 2011-11-04 10:07 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Type of Regression: ---
Verified:
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Description Gary Thomas 2011-09-22 15:40:44 UTC 
A number of recipe steps may require a spawned terminal instance, e.g. patch resolution.

In some cases, this is handled via the configuration variables TERMCMD and TERMCMDRUN.
However, for other cases, in particular 'devshell' and 'menuconfig', it is now handled
by the terminal class (oe_terminal).

The choice of what terminal type (GNOME, XTERM, ...) is inconsistent between these two
methods.  One way specifies them directly, the other relies on the *undocumented* variable 
OE_TERMINAL.

A worrisome case is 'bitbake virtual/kernel -c menuconfig'.  This used to use the TERMCMD
style and was easily controlled.  It now uses terminal.bbclass and fails, at least in
the default, because of the undocumented setup above.  As is, I can no longer run this
step on a separate machine connected via SSH tunnels (GNOME terminal and bitbake don't
play well in this environment, as previously reported)

This change was introduced in commit 04c66de8abfd820380fcfc2882b84650ac0220d5

I think things should only be done one way; either put it back or make it consistent
and fully documented, please.
Comment 1 Richard Purdie 2011-11-03 16:15:47 UTC 
Can you try adding the couple of patches I've posted on the list in the last few hours (patch: Convert to use oe_terminal and bitbake.conf: Drop remaining TERMCMD pieces and document OE_TERMINAL usage instead) and see where things stand?

The intention is just to have OE_TERMINAL controlling everything. menuconfig is working quite nicely for me so if there are problems with that I'd like to know about them.