[Buildroot] [PATCH v3] nc: new virtual package providing "netcat" functionality

Peter Korsgaard peter at korsgaard.com
Mon Oct 2 19:44:56 UTC 2017


>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com> writes:

Hi,

 > What is the benefit of having a virtual package for this ?

 > Virtual packages are mainly useful when several variants of a given
 > library provide the same API, but different implementations, and we
 > have N consumers of this API. In such a case, a virtual package avoids
 > having each consumer explicitly handle every possible provider of the
 > API.

 > However, in the case of netcat, I don't see the point. Yes, you can
 > currently enable several packages that provide the netcat
 > functionality, and they will step on each other in some combinations.

 > But you can also enable several Web servers that will try to listen on
 > port 80 at boot time, leaving only one functional, and still we're not
 > going to have a "webserver" virtual package.

 > So, I don't see where the problem is, and therefore I don't think a
 > solution is necessary :-)

FYI, this is my feeling as well. The current setup afaik only has issues
if you enable more than one package providing a nc implementation (this
solution fixes it by not allowing such setup), but I'm not sure if
there's really a realistic use case where somebody would want to do this
in the first place?

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard


More information about the buildroot mailing list