[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] target.mk: enable iwinfo by default with any wpad variant

[Piotr Dymacz]

Hi Adrian,

On 25.03.2020 16:53, mail at adrianschmutzler.de wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Piotr Dymacz [mailto:pepe2k at gmail.com]
>> Sent: Mittwoch, 25. März 2020 15:08
>> To: mail at adrianschmutzler.de; openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>> Cc: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>; Jo-Philipp Wich <jo at mein.io>
>> Subject: Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] target.mk: enable iwinfo by default
>> with any wpad variant
>> 
>> Hi Adrian,
>> 
>> On 25.03.2020 12:21, mail at adrianschmutzler.de wrote:
>> > Hi Piotr,
>> >
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: openwrt-devel [mailto:openwrt-devel-
>> bounces at lists.openwrt.org]
>> >> On Behalf Of Piotr Dymacz
>> >> Sent: Mittwoch, 25. März 2020 00:34
>> >> To: openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>> >> Subject: [OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] target.mk: enable iwinfo by default
>> >> with any wpad variant
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>> > Since you are touching this, maybe you can elaborate why this
>> > extra_packages construct is needed at all?
>> 
>> I don't know exact reason and it was added long time ago, in 2014, see:
>> 6435b8bb27e. I suppose that was the easy way to handle it back then?
>> 
>> > Why can't we just add iwinfo as selective dependency to the wpad-/nas
>> > packages as we do for all of the other packages?
>> 
>> Could you explain what you mean by 'selective dependency'?
>> 
>> I don't think DEPENDS is correct way to handle this. Do you mean use 'select
>> iwinfo' in wpad/nas packages config?
> 
>  From the point of _functionality_, it would just be a
> DEPENDS := +iwinfo
> for the relevant packages.
> 
> However, I'm aware that this is not correct from a _conceptional_ point of view, since iwinfo is not a "dependency".

Exactly, plus this has also run-time consequences.

>> > I'm asking because I recently had a downstream case where we use
>> > hostapd instead of wpad and wanted to get of iwinfo. I expected iwinfo
>> > to go away because nothing selected it anymore, but in this case it
>> > turned out that iwinfo is not automatically deselected, but has to be
>> > removed manually as well.
>> 
>> I suppose you should first look at DEFAULT_PACKAGES and target.mk.
>> In most cases, wpad-* is added there and that's how iwinfo gets selected.
> 
> For tiny devices, we replace wpad-mini by hostapd-mini (ar71xx/ath79):
> 
> CONFIG_PACKAGE_hostapd-mini=y
> CONFIG_PACKAGE_wpad-mini=m
> 
> However, this will not unselect iwinfo (as it should theoretically according to the extra_packages condition), which will still be at "y", so will be built into the images.
> 
> This can also be observed in make menuconfig, where deselecting any wpad packages does not affect the status of iwinfo. I assume that the extra-packages condition is just evaluated "too early", and not updated during evaluation in make menuconfig like "real" dependencies.
> 
> Of course, removing iwinfo/libiwinfo from images can easily be achieved by
> 
> CONFIG_PACKAGE_iwinfo=m
> CONFIG_PACKAGE_libiwinfo=m
> 
> It's just not a "live-update" like we are used to from DEPENDS.

If you are using custom config files for building, this is the correct 
way to handle it.

>  From looking at the dependencies as described in the Wiki [1], I do not think there really is an alternate solution available at the moment, though.

Are you sure (warn: haven't tried that)?
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/dependencies#special_notes

> Somebody would have to build one, something like @TARGET_ath79, but not for visibility, but for selection. So, somebody could just add the new "dependency" (using § as symbol for the example) to the iwinfo package instead of using the extra_packages construct:
> 
> DEPENDS += §wpad-mini §wpad-basic §nas ...
> However, I'm not sure whether implementing that would really be worth it, considering that disabling extra_packages manually is still quite easy to do.

No.
This is not a dependency so DEPENDS is not the correct way to handle it.

-- 
Cheers,
Piotr

> 
> Best
> 
> Adrian
> 
> [1] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/packages#dependency_types
> 
>> 
>> But I see the problem here, I'm just not sure if it's safe to change current
>> approach. Maybe Felix or Jo are able to explain reason for using
>> extra_packages.
>> 
>> --
>> Cheers,
>> Piotr
>> 
>> >
>> > Best
>> >
>> > Adrian
>> >
>> >>
>> >>  define ProfileDefault
>> >>    NAME:=
>> >> --
>> >> 2.20.1
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >
> 


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