[Buildroot] Some legal-info observations/problems

[Ryan Barnett]

Danomi, All,

Danomi Manchego <danomimanchego123 at gmail.com> wrote on
10/03/2013 08:42:55 AM:

> Ryan,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Ryan Barnett
> <rjbarnet at rockwellcollins.com> wrote:
> >> While I don't need the URL for my process, I currently also don't 
need
> >> the name of the tarball in manifest.csv (and I leave out this last
> >> column anyway). So, I'm not opposed to adding this extra column, but
> >> there may be some caveats: with the OVERRIDE_SRCDIR mechanism it is
> >> possible for a project to completely change the sources of an 
existing
> >> package in buildroot. Strictly speaking this could mean that there is
> >> no relation whatsoever between the URL specified in the .mk file and
> >> the actual sources used. This is probably very exotic, though, and
> >> maybe it doesn't really matter for your process.
> >
> > You bring up an interesting point that I never thought of. However, in
> > the application of OVERRIDE_SRCDIR, I would think that it mainly 
intended
> > for company's application but I could be wrong.
> 
> FWIW, several of our projects regularly use permanent OVERRIDE_SRCDIR
> settings to compile exploded copies of uboot and xloader checked into
> our source control system, rather than maintain patches against some
> off-upstream vendor tarball; it's just easier than educating the folks
> in remote offices about patching.

Thanks for the use case as I never though of that since I've just maintain
a large u-boot/x-loader patch set.

My thought for how this column would work is that if the OVERRIDE_SRCDIR
is used that in the column, "OVERRIDE_SRCDIR Used" would be placed instead
of the URL. This will also make sure that someone explicitly knows they 
are
using the OVERRIDE_SRCDIR feature (not that isn't already obvious in 
local.mk)

Thanks,
-Ryan