[RFC] Identifying image recipes

[RFC] Identifying image recipes

[Barros Pena, Belen]

A couple of weeks ago I ran an informal round of usability testing with
the new Toaster build functionality. One of the major issues that surfaced
was how difficult it is to identify the image recipes you can build, in
between the massive list of recipes coming from the OpenEmbedded metadata
index. It is important that the image recipes are easy to spot because
those are likely to be the first point of interest for Toaster users.

The problem, as far as my understanding goes, is that there is no way in
the OpenEmbedded metadata to tell those apart from other recipes. We could
try and filter image recipes based on the image name (they often contain
the string '-image-'), but that would not be completely accurate.

My question is: would it be possible to introduce a variable to identify
image recipes, I don't know, something like IMAGE_RECIPE = '1' or 'yes'
(just a wild example), that could be included in recipe files to tell
image recipes apart from standard software recipes, and that we could use
in Toaster to filter the recipe list? Is it worth proposing this to
OpenEmbedded, or there is no chance we'll get something like this through?

Thanks!

Belén

Re: [RFC] Identifying image recipes

[Christopher Larson]

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On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 6:08 AM, Barros Pena, Belen <
belen.barros.pena@intel.com> wrote:

> A couple of weeks ago I ran an informal round of usability testing with
> the new Toaster build functionality. One of the major issues that surfaced
> was how difficult it is to identify the image recipes you can build, in
> between the massive list of recipes coming from the OpenEmbedded metadata
> index. It is important that the image recipes are easy to spot because
> those are likely to be the first point of interest for Toaster users.
>
> The problem, as far as my understanding goes, is that there is no way in
> the OpenEmbedded metadata to tell those apart from other recipes. We could
> try and filter image recipes based on the image name (they often contain
> the string '-image-'), but that would not be completely accurate.
>
> My question is: would it be possible to introduce a variable to identify
> image recipes, I don't know, something like IMAGE_RECIPE = '1' or 'yes'
> (just a wild example), that could be included in recipe files to tell
> image recipes apart from standard software recipes, and that we could use
> in Toaster to filter the recipe list? Is it worth proposing this to
> OpenEmbedded, or there is no chance we'll get something like this through?
>

I highly doubt anyone would be a fan of this, though admittedly it'd have
little impact on recipe writers, as you could shove it into the image class
rather than the recipes themselves. That said, I haven't read toaster's
code, yet, but if it actually parses the recipes rather than just examining
the files, you can check to see if they inherit the image class.
-- 
Christopher Larson
clarson at kergoth dot com
Founder - BitBake, OpenEmbedded, OpenZaurus
Maintainer - Tslib
Senior Software Engineer, Mentor Graphics

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Re: [RFC] Identifying image recipes

[Richard Purdie]

On Thu, 2015-04-02 at 13:08 +0000, Barros Pena, Belen wrote:
> A couple of weeks ago I ran an informal round of usability testing with
> the new Toaster build functionality. One of the major issues that surfaced
> was how difficult it is to identify the image recipes you can build, in
> between the massive list of recipes coming from the OpenEmbedded metadata
> index. It is important that the image recipes are easy to spot because
> those are likely to be the first point of interest for Toaster users.
> 
> The problem, as far as my understanding goes, is that there is no way in
> the OpenEmbedded metadata to tell those apart from other recipes. We could
> try and filter image recipes based on the image name (they often contain
> the string '-image-'), but that would not be completely accurate.
> 
> My question is: would it be possible to introduce a variable to identify
> image recipes, I don't know, something like IMAGE_RECIPE = '1' or 'yes'
> (just a wild example), that could be included in recipe files to tell
> image recipes apart from standard software recipes, and that we could use
> in Toaster to filter the recipe list? Is it worth proposing this to
> OpenEmbedded, or there is no chance we'll get something like this through?

As Chris mentions, seeing if a recipe inherits the image class would
likely be the best approach.

Cheers,

Richard

Re: [RFC] Identifying image recipes

[Barros Pena, Belen]

On 02/04/2015 16:17, "Christopher Larson" <clarson@kergoth.com> wrote:

>
>On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 6:08 AM, Barros Pena, Belen
><belen.barros.pena@intel.com> wrote:
>
>A couple of weeks ago I ran an informal round of usability testing with
>the new Toaster build functionality. One of the major issues that surfaced
>was how difficult it is to identify the image recipes you can build, in
>between the massive list of recipes coming from the OpenEmbedded metadata
>index. It is important that the image recipes are easy to spot because
>those are likely to be the first point of interest for Toaster users.
>
>The problem, as far as my understanding goes, is that there is no way in
>the OpenEmbedded metadata to tell those apart from other recipes. We could
>try and filter image recipes based on the image name (they often contain
>the string '-image-'), but that would not be completely accurate.
>
>My question is: would it be possible to introduce a variable to identify
>image recipes, I don't know, something like IMAGE_RECIPE = '1' or 'yes'
>(just a wild example), that could be included in recipe files to tell
>image recipes apart from standard software recipes, and that we could use
>in Toaster to filter the recipe list? Is it worth proposing this to
>OpenEmbedded, or there is no chance we'll get something like this through?
>
>
>
>
>
>I highly doubt anyone would be a fan of this, though admittedly it'd have
>little impact on recipe writers, as you could shove it into the image
>class rather than the recipes themselves. That said, I haven't read
>toaster's code, yet, but if it actually parses
> the recipes rather than just examining the files, you can check to see
>if they inherit the image class.

So there is a way to tell them apart :) Thanks! I'll check with the
development team to see what can be done.

Cheers

Belén


>-- 
>Christopher Larson
>clarson at kergoth dot com
>Founder - BitBake, OpenEmbedded, OpenZaurus
>Maintainer - Tslib
>Senior Software Engineer, Mentor Graphics
>
>

Re: [RFC] Identifying image recipes

[Damian, Alexandru]

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I opened a bug to track a). storing this information in the toaster
database; and b). reporting the information from bitbake to toaster.

https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7571

Cheers,
Alex

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 10:12 AM, Barros Pena, Belen <
belen.barros.pena@intel.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 02/04/2015 16:17, "Christopher Larson" <clarson@kergoth.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 6:08 AM, Barros Pena, Belen
> ><belen.barros.pena@intel.com> wrote:
> >
> >A couple of weeks ago I ran an informal round of usability testing with
> >the new Toaster build functionality. One of the major issues that surfaced
> >was how difficult it is to identify the image recipes you can build, in
> >between the massive list of recipes coming from the OpenEmbedded metadata
> >index. It is important that the image recipes are easy to spot because
> >those are likely to be the first point of interest for Toaster users.
> >
> >The problem, as far as my understanding goes, is that there is no way in
> >the OpenEmbedded metadata to tell those apart from other recipes. We could
> >try and filter image recipes based on the image name (they often contain
> >the string '-image-'), but that would not be completely accurate.
> >
> >My question is: would it be possible to introduce a variable to identify
> >image recipes, I don't know, something like IMAGE_RECIPE = '1' or 'yes'
> >(just a wild example), that could be included in recipe files to tell
> >image recipes apart from standard software recipes, and that we could use
> >in Toaster to filter the recipe list? Is it worth proposing this to
> >OpenEmbedded, or there is no chance we'll get something like this through?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >I highly doubt anyone would be a fan of this, though admittedly it'd have
> >little impact on recipe writers, as you could shove it into the image
> >class rather than the recipes themselves. That said, I haven't read
> >toaster's code, yet, but if it actually parses
> > the recipes rather than just examining the files, you can check to see
> >if they inherit the image class.
>
> So there is a way to tell them apart :) Thanks! I'll check with the
> development team to see what can be done.
>
> Cheers
>
> Belén
>
>
> >--
> >Christopher Larson
> >clarson at kergoth dot com
> >Founder - BitBake, OpenEmbedded, OpenZaurus
> >Maintainer - Tslib
> >Senior Software Engineer, Mentor Graphics
> >
> >
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> toaster mailing list
> toaster@yoctoproject.org
> https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/toaster
>



-- 
Alex Damian
Yocto Project
SSG / OTC

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