Re: [poky] [PATCH RFC] add basic support for b4 contribution workflow

Hi Richard,

On 1/24/25 6:48 PM, Richard Purdie wrote:
> On Thu, 2025-01-23 at 16:44 +0100, Quentin Schulz via lists.yoctoproject.org wrote:
>> From: Quentin Schulz <[email protected]>
>>
>> b4[1] is a very nice tool for mail-based contribution. A config[2] file
>> exists to set up a few defaults. We can use it to set the Cc recipients
>> to always add, in our case the mailing list.
>>
>> This also adds a wrapper script that is called by b4 to check that each
>> patch in the series is only for one project. Indeed, poky is actually
>> a "collection" of multiple repositories, namely BitBake,
>> OpenEmbedded-Core and the Yocto Docs. One patch should therefore not
>> make changes in multiple of those projects otherwise it cannot be
>> merged.
>> Additionally, a check is added to make sure that a series only touches
>> files from one project to avoid having to figure out which patch is to
>> be merged by which maintainer in which project repo.
>>
>> Moreover, it is not uncommon to have people develop patches for those
>> projects from within poky. This wrapper figures out which mailing lists
>> to send patches to based on the files that are modified in the series.
>> Considering that patches to the bitbake/doc/ directory need to be sent
>> to both the bitbake and yocto-docs mailing list, this wrapper handles
>> that. A limitation of the script (lsdiff actually) is that it doesn't
>> know how to handle empty files, but those should be of rather rare
>> occurrences.
>>
>> Note that this script requires hardcoding of paths that are handled by
>> different projects to map files to projects. Anything not mapped is
>> assumed part of OE-Core.
>>
>> [1] https://pypi.org/project/b4/
>> [2] https://b4.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/config.html
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Quentin Schulz <[email protected]>
>> ---
[...]
> I'm not against this but I would like to:
> 
> a) Put the script into OE-Core, just so that we don't have "magic"
> things in poky.

It is very poky-specific though. I don't have anything in mind right now 
but I could imagine we could need a b4 wrapper for openembedded-core at 
some point as well. b4-wrapper-oe-core.py and b4-wrapper-poky.py could 
coexistthough and be pointed at specifically by each repo's .b4-config.

Don't mind it, just find it a bit odd.

I haven't checked if b4 follows symlink, but if it can, would you want 
.b4-config.poky in OE-Core too and then we do the same dance as with the 
README.md in OE-Core/poky?

> b) Perhaps name it something a little more poky specific

b4-wrapper-poky.py? b4-wrapper-poky.py to match README.poky.md for 
example? My brain has already decided it's the weekend so not very 
creative right now :)

Cheers,
Quentin