[LEDE-DEV] Removing package overlay functionality

[Philip Prindeville]

commit b044bd5921e9644c9df9655bef10cee0af730724
Author: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>
Date:   Mon Apr 3 12:36:35 2017 +0200

    build: remove package makefile overlay functionality
    
    Recent attempts to use it have shown that it does not work properly
    except for a few undocumented cases. It's better to remove this now to
    avoid having more people fall into the same trap
    
    Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd at nbd.name>


I was using the overlay functionality, having been steered toward it after my suggestion of adding pre- and post-install hooks that could be added by the developer to customize the build process was nixed (for instance, if you want to run a trivial sed script on a config file which is generated from a .in file and therefore hard to patch).

Yousong steered me toward using the Build/IncludeOverlay mechanism (see the thread “Makefile Question” around 13 Feb 2017).

Now I abruptly found the overlay mechanism has been deleted, and I don’t recall seeing any discussion on whether to do this or not, just the following post script after the fact:

> I agree. I've pushed a commit to my staging tree that removes package
> overlay support.

If it’s hard to use, it should be fixed, not removed.  If it can’t be fixed, then it should be better documents.

Telling someone to use “method X” and then 2 months later deleting it after they’ve spent the time trying to figure out how to use it isn’t cool.

My impression was that LEDE was going to be a little more welcoming to a broader developer community.

Yanking the carpet out from under people doesn’t strike me as particularly welcoming, nor much of a reward for someone bothering to learn about some of the arcane aspects of the system (why bother, if your knowledge could be rendered obsolete in the time it takes someone else to snap their fingers?).

I think we can and should do better than this.

-Philip