Re: interest in a minimal image recipe

[Ed Tanous <ed@tanous.net>]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:20 AM Brad Bishop
<bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 08:53:26AM -0700, Ed Tanous wrote:
> >On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 5:55 AM Brad Bishop <bradleyb@fuzziesquirrel.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Ok but those are autotools/cmake/meson options which correlate to a
> >> distro feature or maybe a packageconfig.  Those are orthogonal to image
> >> features and image recipes, which is what I've proposed.  I've not
> >> proposed a minimal distro policy.
> >
> >Maybe this has all been a wash then.  I had thought you were proposing
> >a minimal distro, and didn't realize you were building a minimal image
> >with the existing distro.  My bad.
>
> No worries.  To have a minimal distro, we first need a set of default
> distro features from which to subtract some to have a minimal set.  We
> don't really have any real distro features defined yet - the ones we do
> are non-sensical IMO - they are artifacts of my lack of bitbake-fu from
> 5 years ago.  I would like to hear about areas where you think it might
> make sense to define distro features.

To be clear, I'm not blaming you here.  I think we're all learning our
way through yoctos eccentricities :)

>
> >With that said, the images description is "Basic OpenBMC image with
> >full support for the hardware supported by the system".  Was it
> >intentional to call out "full support"?  Maybe I've misinterpreted the
> >long term intent of this patch?
>
> I can see how my summary would cause confusion.  FWIW I used the summary
> in core-image-base as a template.  Is there a better summary?

Something like: "A basic OpenBMC image with no features enabled".

>
> Maybe this helps - I was trying to replicate oe-core:
>
>   core-image-sato -> obmc-phosphor-image (all/most of the image features
>                                           are enabled by default)
>   core-image-base -> obmc-phosphor-image-base (a minimal set of packages)

Ahhhh, that makes a lot more sense if that was your model.  For some
reason I thought you were trying to build the equivalent of
core-image-minimal, whose description is:
"This is the most basic image allowing a device to boot to a Linux
command-line login".  I got mixed up in my yocto terminology.

>
> What is the minimal set of packages?  I don't think we know yet.  I
> expect many to bbappend obmc-phosphor-image-base, and select specific
> image features (IMAGE_FEATURES) or directly install packages
> (IMAGE_INSTALL).  After enough time has passed, we can use those as an
> input for identifying what makes sense to use in the base image recipe
> as the default.

So your thinking is that this would eventually become the new
"defaults" image?  Possibly the "well supported" image?  I can get
behind that.