Re: [PATCH] Revert "dpkg: sbuild allows extra arguments via DPKG_SBUILD_EXTRA_ARGS"

[Henning Schild <henning.schild@siemens.com>]

Am Thu, 2 Feb 2023 20:06:12 +0100
schrieb "Roberto A. Foglietta" <roberto.foglietta@gmail.com>:

> On Thu, 2 Feb 2023 at 15:42, Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > From: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>
> >
> > This reverts commit 6d5fbbab9c9e3c894cbc9cf18180fb0057f82f20.
> >
> > There are no concrete use cases for this interface known. Adding it
> > without an idea what it should be good for can create downstream
> > problems as the class evolves and also motivate inappropriate use of
> > this low-level interface in recipes.  
> 
> Open-source is about empowering the users and unless illegal use of
> it, there is no any reason to judge the use they do of it. It is hard
> to think that a variable would motivate an "inappropriate use" unless
> the user did not find a way to address a problem and the go to look in
> that class. At that point, it might find a quick solution in that
> variable without the need of overload the entire class in the top
> layer and modify the class loosing the upstream updates. I agree that
> there is no reason to documenting that variable. It is
> self-explanatory and quick to identify for those get deep into the
> dpkg class.

All EXTRA_ARGS switches are very dangerous because they allow very
unintended hacks. We have several of them and some of them have caused
some serious fun. Especially if people use them "code-injection-style"

like EXTRA = "; true; sudo fun"

So just say what exactly you use it for. What is the value you are
setting it to and why? Maybe there is a cleaner solution to the problem
at hand.
If there is not problem at hand, or you fail to explain it. I have to
agree that this gives too much power and too much abuse potential. And
bitbake has means to overlay _append etc. So the open source power is
not limited by Isar not taking this.

Unintended use causes severe headache in maintaining Isar. Because
people will complain about interface changes when we change stuff ...
but how they use things was never intended ... so no interface.

Henning

> MHO.
> 
> Best regards, R-
>