[Buildroot] [PATCH v2 1/2] libsodium: new package

Frank Hunleth fhunleth at troodon-software.com
Tue May 19 12:05:03 UTC 2015


Hi Thomas,

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> Dear Frank Hunleth,
>
> On Mon, 18 May 2015 12:07:24 -0400, Frank Hunleth wrote:
>
>> As I said in a previous email, I use the host package and asked for
>> guidance for including host packages or not. I didn't see a response.
>> While I certainly don't mind removing it, it would be nice to know why
>> host packages are such a problem. For me, it is very convenient that
>> Buildroot requires so little of the host Linux environment to work.
>> Libsodium, in particular, is annoying since you can't apt-get install
>> it in Ubuntu 12.04. I know that's old, but it's around. Anyway, that's
>> my 2 cents. It will be gone for v3...
>
> The thing is that we generally don't like to have "dangling" packages,
> that are not used by anything in Buildroot.
>
> Normally, host packages fall into one of the two following categories:
>
>  * Used as a dependency to build a target package. In this case, the
>    host package is listed as host-<foo> in the <pkg>_DEPENDENCIES of
>    another package. So it is actually used by something in Buildroot.
>
>  * Used as a tool (for flashing, creating images, debugging, etc.) and
>    in this case, it's listed in the "Host utilities" menu in
>    menuconfig. In this case, it is directly visible to the user.
>
> But what you propose here does not fall into any of these two cases. We
> don't put host libraries in the "Host utilities" menu, and your host
> package is not used by any other package in Buildroot, hence Baruch's
> reaction.
>
> I think we may have made a couple of exceptions in the past, but I'm
> not sure how many. And they still have the major drawback that such
> packages will never be tested, because they cannot be reached by
> autobuilder testing.

Thanks for the explanation. That encourages me to get the host utility
that uses libsodium submitted. :)

A follow-up patch for libsodium is coming shortly. Hopefully this one
passes muster.

Thanks,
Frank



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