[U-Boot] [RFC PATCH v2 0/2] Make Python scripts compatible with older versions

[Igor Grinberg]

On 08/07/14 20:33, Stephen Warren wrote:
> On 08/07/2014 10:57 AM, Tom Rini wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 07, 2014 at 04:17:21PM +0300, Igor Grinberg wrote:
>>> On 08/07/14 13:57, Tom Rini wrote:
> ..
>>>> we just need
>>>> /usr/bin/env python2 as how we invoke our scripts.
>>>
>>> This means impose python version dependency for U-Boot source build?
>>> Correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I don't think this is a good
>>> practice...
>>> I think that for tools like buildman, patman, etc. - this is
>>> perfectly fine to impose an interpreter/compiler version, but not
>>> for the basic source builds.
>>
>> I agree.  You don't need MAKEALL or buildman to do basic source builds.
>> Doing 'make foo_defconfig' doesn't require re-creating boards.cfg.
>>
>> To me, the gray area is people doing SoC level (or higher) changes that
>> want to be good and test more areas.  That's when MAKEALL or buildman
>> become handy and some sort of win over a shell forloop.
> 
> Why on earth isn't relying specifically on either Python2 (with the current script code) or Python3 (after porting the code) a good practice?

Because I think (I can think this way, right?) it is not a good practice
to bring another host machine dependency (moreover, version dependency)
for the simple source code build (now it also backfired in OE).

> Banning or replacing the use of Python just because they cleaned up their language seems like poking your eye out to spite your nose (or whatever the expression is). The same thing will happen with Perl, and happened with dtc, etc.

Did I say ban python or something? No, I did not say that.
What I'm saying is:
Right now, we have compiler dependency (a must as you can't practically
produce any code without it), and we have dtc (a must if you want to
compile dts), and we have make, and we have shell (this one is found
on every host, although windows users have to use cygwin or such,
but who cares, so no problem), and now we also add python to the soup?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with python...
I can have any number of python versions I want (I think gentoo is
the best at supporting this kind of stuff...).
I just don't think that basic code compile should depend on even more
stuff being added.
I've compiled various bootloaders and have seen huge dependencies on
tools and after all the build time and complexity got worth and worth.
I don't really want U-Boot to go that direction, but more to keep it
simple and stupid.


-- 
Regards,
Igor.