Re: [meta-oe,thud][PATCH 0/6] libiio: backports from master

From: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
To: Martin Siegumfeldt <mns@gomspace.com>
Cc: "openembedded-devel@lists.openembedded.org"
	<openembedded-devel@lists.openembedded.org>
Subject: Re: [meta-oe,thud][PATCH 0/6] libiio: backports from master
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 20:23:20 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20191106182320.GA14721@localhost> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ac4526ac0f8848e2b7984e032f11dc29@gomspace.com>

On Wed, Nov 06, 2019 at 09:14:46AM +0000, Martin Siegumfeldt wrote:
> Hi Adrian,

Hi Martin,

> I see - can you please confirm that this constraint applies to Zeus and Warrior (which is also stable according to https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Releases)

I do not have any special authority on that, but [1] applies to all 
stable branches (including warrior and zeus).

> What I am trying to achieve (from the thud baseline) is to get libiio python3 bindings built. Now, most of the variables from libiio_git.bb can be overridden in an append file, except for the 'inherit pythonnative' statement that dictates python2 bindings to be packaged. AFAICS, this leaves me with the only option of, not appending, but to define my own (.bb) recipe in my layer taking precedence over the one from meta-openembedded - a suboptimal solution I guess.
> 
> Anything I am missing?

One main purpose of a stable branch is that a user upgrading on a
stable branch should get bugfixes and especially security fixes,
but no regressions.

When you create your distribution or upgrade to a different Yocto stable
branch you might get breaking changes and things you are using might break,
but this is not supposed to happen on a stable branch.

If you need to backport functionality from more recent series you can 
always backport this into your layer. I usually have a recipes-backport/ 
in my layer that contains functionality backported from more recent 
series, in this case I would have a recipes-backport/libiio/libiio_git.bb
with the recipe copied from the current master. Once you upgrade your 
layer to Yocto >= 3.1 you will be able to drop this backport.

This might sound like a suboptimal solution to you, but it avoids the 
risk of breaking anything for the many other users of this stable series.

> Thanks,
> Martin

cu
Adrian

[1] https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Stable_branch_maintenance#Policies

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed