The current explanation of FILESOVERRIDES in the dev manual is simply a line in the "Fetching Code" section -- https://docs.yoctoproject.org/dev-manual/new-recipe.html#fetching-code -- which refers the reader to the reference manual. FILESOVERRIDES is important enough that it merits its own (sub)section, pulling a lot out of the reference manual back into the dev manual. It should bolster its explanation with an actual example torn from oe-core: formfactor -- https://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core/tree/meta/recipes-bsp/formfactor -- and it should discuss the behaviour explained by Quentin Schulz in his 2022 presentation (starting at slide 102): https://pretalx.com/media/yocto-project-summit-2022-05/submissions/SCYYWD/resources/Demystifying_the_OVERRIDES_mec_2lZOP
This improved explanation should show the reader how to display the value of FILESOVERRIDES so they truly appreciate the possibilities: $ bitbake-getvar FILESOVERRIDES NOTE: Starting bitbake server... # # $FILESOVERRIDES [2 operations] # set /home/rpjday/oe/layers/poky/meta/conf/bitbake.conf:807 # "${TRANSLATED_TARGET_ARCH}:${MACHINEOVERRIDES}:${DISTROOVERRIDES}" # set /home/rpjday/oe/layers/poky/meta/conf/documentation.conf:176 # [doc] "A subset of OVERRIDES used by the OpenEmbedded build system for creating FILESPATH." # pre-expansion value: # "${TRANSLATED_TARGET_ARCH}:${MACHINEOVERRIDES}:${DISTROOVERRIDES}" FILESOVERRIDES="aarch64:qemuall:aarch64:qemuarm64:poky"