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core: allow for custom, local help; rearrange package-specific help (branch yem/help)

Arnout Vandecappelle buildroot 1 version New

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  1. v1 Latest8 patches 0 repliesNew

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#Subject and filesSizeRepliesApplied
1/8core: add the possibility to provide help for local, custom rules+0 -01 reply
1/8core: add the possibility to provide help for local, custom rules+0 -00 replies
2/8core/pkg-utils: add a macro to pretty-print a help entry+0 -03 replies
3/8core/pkg-generic: add help about package-specific rules+0 -00 replies
4/8package/busybox: use the generic help rules+0 -00 replies
5/8linux: add the generic help rules+0 -05 replies
5/8linux: add the generic help rules+0 -01 reply
6/8package/uclibc: use the generic help rules+0 -00 replies
7/8boot/barebox: use the generic help rules+0 -00 replies

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PatchArnout Vandecappelle (Essensium/Mind)
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1/8
2/8
3/8R-b
4/8R-b
5/8
5/8
6/8R-b
7/8R-b

Trailers given in replies are filled; those carried in the patches from earlier versions are outlined with dashes.

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Cover letter [Buildroot] [PATCH 0/8] core: allow for custom, local help; rearrange package-specific help (branch yem/help)

Hi Yann,

Feedback on the overall series rather than individual patches.

Quoted 6 lines · Yann E. MORIN

Hello All!

This series is an alternative proposal to support displaying custom, local help, most probably from a br2-external tree (or from a lcal.mk, but that'd be pretty insane).

Quoted 6 lines

The basic idea is to offer the user help entries for local customisations, but without mixing them with our own help entries.

I believe we want to keep them separate, as inter-mixing the two could lead users to believe those addtional help entries are "native" in buildroot, when they are not.

This is where I have a different opinion. I don't see a problem with "mixing"
(it's actually appending) with the normal buildroot help. For the user, it makes no difference if it's internal or external. And all the additional documentation and special handling is really not worth it for such a corner case, IMHO.

That said, it's mostly bike-shedding, so I don't care too much either way.

Quoted 2 lines

The same way we expose all of br2-external config options under a sub-menu labelled "User-provided options",

Well, I think that's more a technical accident than a deliberate decision.
It's just not possible to insert external stuff into package/Config.in.

Quoted 2 lines

we do similarly for the
custom help, albeit with a slight shorter moniker, 'help-local'.

What I _do_ strongly oppose is the 'local' bit. external or something is
better IMHO.

Quoted 4 lines

After the first patch implements this (which is really all that is needed to print custom help), we go further with providing a macro that pretty-prints the help for rules, so that the layout is all handled in a single location. This macro can also be used by the local help, too.

This bit I really like!

Regards,
Arnout

Quoted 50 lines

This macro is then used to implement per-package specific help (which is currently only about kconfig-related changes, but can not easily be done in the kconfig-package infra) into the packages themseves, to clean up the main help code (the entris are still displayed there, they are just definedin each concerned package).

All that, plus a bit of associated documentation, of course. ;-)

Thanks to J?r?me for his initial proposal, and Arnout for before-inception suggestions:

     http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/buildroot/2016-March/155415.html

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

The following changes since commit 07f46c2b6daec44a6176039c90be67e66c4c2e42:

package/busybox: support automatic module loading with mdev (2016-03-09 23:07:44 +0100)

are available in the git repository at:

git://git.busybox.net/~ymorin/git/buildroot yem/help

for you to fetch changes up to b94d50a5f7717ad1ea2d9cab129155a0ab203f71:

   docs/manual: document the br2-external help-local (2016-03-09 23:10:37 +0100)

----------------------------------------------------------------
Yann E. MORIN (8):
core: add the possibility to provide help for local, custom rules core/pkg-utils: add a macro to pretty-print a help entry core/pkg-generic: add help about package-specific rules package/busybox: use the generic help rules
linux: add the generic help rules
package/uclibc: use the generic help rules boot/barebox: use the generic help rules
docs/manual: document the br2-external help-local

  Makefile                                | 23 +++++++----------------
  boot/barebox/barebox.mk                 |  4 ++++
  docs/manual/adding-packages-generic.txt |  6 ++++++
  docs/manual/customize-outside-br.txt    | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
  linux/linux.mk                          |  6 ++++++
  package/busybox/busybox.mk              |  2 ++
  package/pkg-generic.mk                  |  2 ++
  package/pkg-utils.mk                    | 13 +++++++++++++
  package/uclibc/uclibc.mk                |  2 ++
  9 files changed, 62 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)
Signature · 6 lines
Arnout Vandecappelle                          arnout at mind be
Senior Embedded Software Architect            +32-16-286500
Essensium/Mind                                http://www.mind.be
G.Geenslaan 9, 3001 Leuven, Belgium           BE 872 984 063 RPR Leuven
LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoutvandecappelle
GPG fingerprint:  7493 020B C7E3 8618 8DEC 222C 82EB F404 F9AC 0DDF