[Buildroot] [PATCH v1 1/1] coreutils: allow selection of installed programs

Romain Izard romain.izard.pro at gmail.com
Wed Feb 3 17:13:53 UTC 2016


2016-02-03 17:34 GMT+01:00 Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com>:
>
> Dear Romain Izard,
>
> On Wed,  3 Feb 2016 12:14:48 +0100, Romain Izard wrote:
>
> > +menuconfig BR2_PACKAGE_COREUTILS_SELECT
> > +     bool "Override the default set of installed coreutils"
> > +     depends on BR2_PACKAGE_COREUTILS
> > +
> > +if BR2_PACKAGE_COREUTILS_SELECT
> >
> > ...
> >
> > +endif
>
> This is really a loooooong list of options that will be annoying to
> maintain I believe.
>

Is the coreutils package moving that fast ?

The list is now done, and it's not that hard to customize
the "gen-list-of-programs.sh" script from coreutils to generate
a new version, even to reproduce the few manual tweaks I used.

And adding/removing an entry from time to time does not look that annoying.
This type of list can be an issue when different development branches
touch the same file, but here I do not expect it to be an issue.

> What about instead having a string option to list the requested binaries?
> If empty, then the default programs are built and installed.  If
> non-empty, then only the programs listed in the string option will be
> built and installed.

That's what I wanted to do in the beginning.

>From what I understand from the coreutils configure.ac and m4/* files,
it is not possible to start from an empty list, and then add requested
programs, at least without patching.

As coreutils is one of the longest-lived GNU projects, its autotool
configuration is so elaborate that I do not feel comfortable with
changing it.

As a bonus, as each program is documented (with the headline
from its man page in the coreutils package), the user experience
in Kconfig is quite good, whereas a comma-separated, 30-word
configuration option will be cumbersome to edit and review.

The same pattern also exists in the util-linux package, but with half
as many options.

Best regards,
-- 
Romain Izard


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