On Fri, 2022-02-18 at 14:13 +0000, Richard Purdie via lists.openembedded.org
wrote:

On Thu, 2022-02-17 at 15:01 -0800, Saul Wold wrote:

I am working on a proposal to re-write how INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSES is used
and processed to possibly include a COMPATIBLE_LICENSES variable as
well, see PeterK's email [0]

I am trying to determine the usage of WHITELIST_<license> which would be
used to override a license that might be listed in INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSES
variable.

Randy and I have done a quick and dirty survey of a 100 or so layers
(thanks Randy) and could not find any real usage other than what's
currently in OE-Core for WHITELIST_GPL-3.0.

If you are using WHITELIST_<license>, please let me reply with your usage.


[0] https://lists.openembedded.org/g/openembedded-devel/message/95166

We need to be mindful that we need to resolve this to unblock the other language
changes and feature creep here is potentially problematic. I do think it is
worth trying to improve things rather than blindly allowing the horrible syntax
in this variable to continue though.

The test case we have for this currently is:

WHITELIST_GPL-3.0:pn-core-image-minimal = "bash"

so I'd wondered about an alternative of:

INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSE_EXCEPTIONS:pn-core-image-minimal = "bash:GPL-3.0"

which matches the current functionality, removes the issue that the name of the
variable is unknown without iterating every possible license name and makes it
clear where it is applying to.

I don't really like INCOMPATIBLE_LICENSE_ALLOWED_RECIPES since:

a) it is long
b) it refers to recipes when it works against packages

Just as a warning, the code is actually confused. The base.bbclass code assumes
it is a recipe name, the license_image code assumes it is a package name.

All the more reason to come up with a standard and resolve this. My proposal
stands but we need to decide if it is a recipe or package name that is listed
(or both?).

Cheers,

Richard