Re: [OE-core] master/main branch renaming and bitbake

["Richard Purdie" <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Thu, 2021-05-13 at 17:33 -0400, colin walters wrote:
> 
> On Thu, May 13, 2021, at 4:08 PM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> > 
> > The advice to anyone hitting this issue is to add in the correct branch
> > to the SRC_URI. It is simple and easy to do, can be in bbappends 
> > or even changed via anonymous python and similar if necessary. We've already
> > found the issue with several core recipes, we simply updated them and most 
> > users didn't notice. I would even likely take that kind of change into older
> > otherwise unmaintained branches and I think I did so in at least one case in
> > the past.
> 
> What I am uncertain about is: how quickly does that translate into us being 
> able to remove the old branch?

My personal opinion is see the patches updating the SRC_URIs make the branches
given we know about this one and then do it.

> We're not the first project to do this and we won't be the last, so having a 
> solution here will be good.

I'm suggesting people update the recipes.

> Hmm actually I notice systemd upstream did the rename a while ago and they're 
> not carrying a `master` branch.  What's the difference between systemd and ostree here?
> 
> Is it the use of `SRCREV`?  Or no, in the systemd case is it because it's set to a tag?
> https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/blob/2621dbbc1181808f18ca4ae79408d0d5b557670f/meta/recipes-core/systemd/systemd.inc#L18
> ostree is also using tags, is the recipe just broken in not using tags?

No:

SRCBRANCH = "v247-stable"
SRC_URI = "git://github.com/systemd/systemd-stable.git;protocol=git;branch=${SRCBRANCH}

i.e. there is a specific branch specified.

> > I appreciate the tooling could do all kinds of magic things. I have a strong
> > preference for not adding magic into it, or over complicating it, it is already
> > horrendously complicated and a nightmare to test. I appreciate nobody believes
> > me, I only do my best to maintain it. The code is here for anyone interested:
> > 
> > http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/bitbake/lib/bb/fetch2/git.py
> 
> Yeah, understood.
> 
> > I'd also note you can add ;nobranch=1 to the urls or ;usehead=1. Those do
> > have side effects, I will not recommend them, or accept them for general use
> > in layers I maintain, they're considered developer options. I was reminded
> > recently that we have seen bugs the branch parameter has caught where a 
> > revision was not where we thought it was so these do catch real world issues.
> 
> Well I hope the result of this discussion is a recommended best practice at least.
> If recommending using a tag works, that seems good to me.

People should add/update the branch in SRC_URI.

Cheers,

Richard