[yocto] PREFERRED_PROVIDER in image recipes

[Daniel Kenji Morgan]

Sorry to bring up an old post, but I haven't managed to find information in the mail archives and bugzilla on how the issue stands as of today.

The post I am referring to is as follows:
https://lists.yoctoproject.org/pipermail/yocto/2011-December/005951.html

I have two separate recipes for the same kernel version.
One with a kernel configuration with various options enabled to assist debugging.
The other with said options disabled.

Ideally, I would like to be able to set PREFERRED_PROVIDER to the kernel recipes in custom image recipes for the same machine.
This is something that is being discussed in the referred post above.
Does anyone know if such functionality is being pursued in a future release of Poky?