puzzled about definition of "build" task

first time i noticed this in base.bbclass:

addtask build after do_populate_sysroot
do_build = "" <--- ????
do_build[func] = "1"
do_build[noexec] = "1"
do_build[recrdeptask] += "do_deploy"

do_build () {
        :
}

what's with the lines

do_build = ""
do_build[func] = "1"

i've never seen that construct with any other tasks.

rday

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

I believe this was a remnant, from before bitbake started disliking empty tasks. The "" and func = 1 bit defined it as a function but whose contents were the empty string, but that's not something bitbake likes anymore, hence the new definition with the :. See the git-blame info for those lines to see the commits that last touched them: git blame '-L/^do_build/,/^}/' meta/classes/base.bbclass

Christopher Larson
clarson at kergoth dot com
Founder - BitBake, OpenEmbedded, OpenZaurus
Maintainer - Tslib
Senior Software Engineer, Mentor Graphics