Hi,

On Wed Jan 14, 2026 at 4:39 PM CET, Alexander Kanavin via 
lists.openembedded.org wrote:
[...]
>> > 2. Allow Empty Variants in Templates
>> >
>> > Currently, bitbake-setup init requires the user to select a variant when
>> > one is defined in the template. There is no option to skip this selection.
>>
>> I believe this is already achievable with the --skip-selection option?
>>
>> > Allowing templates without variants (or making variant selection optional)
>> > would reduce the number of questions during setup, making the process
>> > faster and more approachable for newcomers.
>>
>> Instead of no variants, maybe we just want to instruct the user to run:
>>
>>   bitbake-setup init --non-interactive choice1 choice2 ...
>>
>> Another idea would be to make it possible to define default choices
>> in an existing template? The documentation would then instruct the user to
>> simply execute:
>>
>>   bitbake-setup init --non-interactive
>>
>> which, with no choices passed on the command-line, would provide the user 
>> with
>> the default variant (the Poky Setup). The default choices would still have 
>> to be
>> printed on the console to make it clear to the user what was selected.
>
> It would really help to provide an example config template, and use
> that to illustrate usability issues, and proposed improvements. I'm
> afraid I simply am confused by the point 2, and I don't understand the
> issue reported in it, or the suggested solution.
>
> If there are no choices to be made (e.g. only one variant),
> bitbake-setup will pick that without asking. There's also
> --skip-selection option, but it is expressly *not* for newcomers as it
> will result in an incomplete bitbake config. If one wants less
> questions, then they should remove variants from the configuration
> template, otherwise bitbake-setup needs to pick something from several
> choices one way or another.

I think the point here is that newcomers reading the documentation will use the
default registry and not a custom configuration template, and that it would be
more user-friendly to _not_ make the user choose options from the default
registry.

That being said… I think it was the intention of the project to give the user 
the
option to choose. I don't really have an opinion on whether the user should
choose or not choose at the moment.

On that note, if we go the "user has to choose every option" way, I think it
would be nice to have a description of built-in fragments too.

If you read this as a newcomer:
 
  Target machines:
  1. machine/qemux86-64
  2. machine/qemuarm64
  3. machine/qemuriscv64
  4. machine/genericarm64
  5. machine/genericx86-64

  Please select one of the above options by its number:

  Distribution configuration variants:
  1. distro/poky
  2. distro/poky-altcfg
  3. distro/poky-tiny

  Please select one of the above options by its number:

I'm not sure a newcomer would know what to choose here. A description would
probably help. It's also a simple addition I guess?

Antonin

-- 
Antonin Godard, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com

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