[oi-dev] Purpose of PACKAGE_NAMES

[Marcel Telka]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 02:13:42PM +0200, Aurélien Larcher wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 10:15 AM Marcel Telka <marcel at telka.sk> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > I noticed there are PACKAGE_NAMES macros set for few components in the
> > oi-userland git repo.  Namely here:
> >
> > components/meta-packages/history/Makefile
> > components/openindiana/gfx-drm/Makefile
> > components/openindiana/pkg/Makefile
> > components/openindiana/slim_source/Makefile
> >
> > They were added in October 2018 by following commits:
> >
> > c7b5e23fc94
> > 2e3897664af
> > ac1196a7cb0
> > a4bb6ce259f
> >
> > I'm curious what is the purpose of these macros.  As far as I know there
> > is no known consumer for them.  They looks like some attempt to list
> > packages generated by a component before we had support for pkg5 files
> > (introduced in 2020).
> >
> > If PACKAGE_NAMES are unused then I plan to simply remove them once I
> > touch those Makefiles.
> >
> 
> If I remember correctily they were introduced to produce package names used
> in dependency resolution in the external python scripts, for components
> that generate packages internally and then copy them rather than the usual
> procedure.

Okay, thanks.  I translate the above as: yes, PACKAGE_NAMES was a
predecessor of pkg5.

> The goal was to trigger rebuild of dependencies based on this information
> and avoid publication of broken repositories e.g. when ABI is broken and
> the update is split in several PRs due to our flawed CI.

If I'm not mistaken the same could be done using the (modern) pkg5 files.

> Without these definitions print-package-names would produce an incomplete
> list of packages provided by the component and the graph will have dangling
> dependencies.

I just tried `gmake publish` and then `gmake print-package-names` in
openindiana/pkg and this is the result:

Makefile:45: warning: overriding recipe for target 'update'
/data/builds/ul-workspace/make-rules/component.mk:49: warning: ignoring old recipe for target 'update'
package-names= (origin: undefined, flavor: undefined)

So PACKAGE_NAMES is useless there these days.

Also, `gmake update-metadata` in openindiana/pkg does strange things, so
apparently there is something else broken.  Anyway, if `gmake
update-metadata` is able to work for openindiana/illumos-gate without
PACKAGE_NAMES, then we should be able to make it working for other
components too wihout PACKAGE_NAMES.

> However I am not sure if the bass/component.py script still relies on these
> definitions (there is also a build-plan branch that attempts to automate
> rebuild of dependencies).

I'm unable to find PACKAGE_NAMES in bass/component.py so it apparently
does not rely on it.  And looking at the history it never did.

Quick look at your build-plan branch shows there is no PACKAGE_NAMES
mentioned there.


So the result so far is: PACKAGE_NAMES is unused nad useless and we
should simply remove it.


Thanks Aurélien for information.

-- 
+-------------------------------------------+
| Marcel Telka   e-mail:   marcel at telka.sk  |
|                homepage: http://telka.sk/ |
+-------------------------------------------+