Hi All,

We'd like to get the first 3.1 point release Dunfell LTS out soon.
There is one issue we need to resolve first.

meta-arm has recently been established and the hope is to avoid
duplication of a set of recipes in multiple BSP layers, a goal which I
believe is in everyone's interests. As with any new layer there are a
few growing pains like the removal of python2 dependencies and its made
good progress but there is an issue we didn't foresee.

Two of the key components that BSPs need from there (tf-a and optee)
which are needed for handling boot crypto have dependencies on
pyelftools and pycryptodome which were in meta-python in meta-
openembedded. In master we moved them to core:

http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=d52929ee35d043211cb012e1b86409599a8b53c6
http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=1e327abcc92d6575df5c1871e6e1284987b74b87

and upgraded them to the latest versions:

http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=cb94d9019b4d1ce32ad9196cb9c22236631e8781
http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=7ebe299c00ec309cd46905ad40036d937fe609d7

For master that is easy, problem solved.

For Dunfell, I've already seen complaints that using any of the BSPs
means adding meta-arm which means adding meta-python which pulls in
other chunks of meta-oe. Using a BSP shouldn't require pulling in large
numbers of other layers and this defeats what we're trying to achieve
with a granular layer model.

Had we realised sooner, we likely would have taken this change into
dunfell before release but sadly we didn't.

The LTS policy is quite clear we now shouldn't make a change like this.
Equally, we're early in Dunfell's development, we have an unforeseen
issue which is causing users real world pain.

Our options are:

a) Do nothing
b) Move the recipes
c) Move the recipes and take the upgrades

Given the impact on end users and the desire to have good user
experience with our first LTS, as the layer maintainer and having
discussed this with others and on the tech call yesterday, I am
strongly leaning to b or c. I think this issue isn't one Steve as LTS
maintainer or I as OE-Core maintainer can make alone and I'm therefore
referring to the TSC. Which TSC is a good question. LTS is owned by YP,
the layers by OE. As such I've cc'd both sets of TSC members. I've put
it to the architecture list so everyone can see why we're considering
this and any discussion on it.

Considering the potential regressions, if a user upgrades both layers
with these changes things are fine. If the user upgrades meta-python
but not OE-Core, they get a build error which is also fine and
straightforward to debug. If the user upgrades OE-Core but not meta-
python, there is the possibility they could see old versions being used
due to layer priority (assuming we upgrade the versions) but this isn't
known to cause real world issues.

We have the option of the patch to increase the OE-Core version and
then bumping the version requirement in meta-python to further improve
the user experience.

I'm conscious there has already been talk of "favouritism". I would
stress this issue has actually been raised by end users and that is the
driving factor here.

The fact there are interested member companies of YP does actually help
in some ways too since it means there are people available to help
handle any issues should there be unexpected fallout from this change.

If we do this, I would say as a TSC member that we'd do it without
setting any precedent, this is being discussed based on the situation
at hand, in the future other situations would have to be looked at on a
case by case basis.

I did quickly sound out the YP TSC at a meeting yesterday and I believe
on balance they're in favour of b/c, two of the OE TSC members on the
tech call yesterday were also in favour in principle. Whilst that is a
majority, that does leave a couple of TSC members who haven't seen the
discussion and everyone probably benefits from this having been written
down.

Does anyone object to doing this? If we do it, do we upgrade the
recipes or not? I'm probably leaning towards upgrading too as up to
date crypto components are probably better than not updated and some
kind of parity with master now will probably catch more potential
issues.

Cheers,

Richard


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