[OE-core] [RFC] Add something like bitbake -cmenuconfig <recipe> ?

[Paul Eggleton]

Hi Robert,

On Monday 18 May 2015 09:52:50 Robert Yang wrote:
> On 05/17/2015 05:34 AM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> > On Fri, 2015-05-15 at 10:35 +0800, Robert Yang wrote:
> >> Is is useful/possible if we add something like bitbake <recipe>
> >> -cmenuconfig, just like kernel's make menuconfig ?
> >> 
> >> We can use the menuconfig to config the vars such as MACHINE, DL_DIR,
> >> DISTRO_FEATURES, MACHINE_FEATURES and all the variables which are
> >> configurable, I think that this would help the newbie a lot.
> >> 
> >> I think that we can add a menuconfig.bbclass (or other names) to do this,
> >> and I'd like to work on it.
> > 
> > Why would you want to specify a <recipe> when configuring MACHINE? I
> > understand why you're thinking this but it isn't well thought out and in
> > this form would confuse users more than help them.
> > 
> > I don't think the system will even parse without a valid MACHINE, let
> > alone execute tasks.
> 
> I meant that we need something to help configure the build easier, it
> can generate something like local.conf.append, not configure the recipe.
> 
> The example "bitbake <recipe> -cmenuconfig" wasn't right enough, it's
> just a rough thought, we can use the current default local.conf
> (MACHINE = qemux86) to make system parse.
> 
> The problem is that we have many bbclasses in oe-core, a lot of them
> has specify configurations, and also a lot of vars in the conf file such
> as bitbake.conf, it's not easy to know how and what to config, especially,
> for newbies. The "bitbake -cmenuconfig" maybe not a good idea, I think that
> we need something to help config the build (generate local.conf) easier,
> do you have any suggestions, please ?

This is likely the direction we will be going in with the Toaster web UI - 
with a web-based tool we can present a much friendlier interface and have the 
chance to link to other information, for example we can link to the 
appropriate manual section for individual variables (and in future error 
messages, classes, etc.), analyse the output of the build, manage multiple 
sets of configuration, etc. These are things that would be difficult to do 
practically from the command line.

Cheers,
Paul

-- 

Paul Eggleton
Intel Open Source Technology Centre