[yocto] undocumented MACHINE_FEATURES, and what makes something a MACHINE feature?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  quick scan shows the following MACHINE features are not listed in
section 10.2 of the ref manual:

 rtc
 vfat
 phone
 qvga
 efi
 pcibios

conversely, "screen" is listed but doesn't appear to be a valid
MACHINE feature. but here's a curiosity i noticed.

  "wifi" is listed in the ref manual as a MACHINE feature but,
throughout the dora source tree, here is the set of tests for it as a
"FEATURE":

$ grep -r "base_contains.*_FEATURES" * | grep wifi
meta/recipes-connectivity/neard/neard.inc:
${@base_contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi','wpa-supplicant', '', d)} \
meta/recipes-connectivity/connman/connman.inc:
${@base_contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi','wifi', '', d)} \
meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb:
${@base_contains("DISTRO_FEATURES", "wifi", "packagegroup-base-wifi",
"", d)} \
meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb:
${@base_contains('COMBINED_FEATURES', 'wifi',
'packagegroup-base-wifi', '',d)} \
meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb:
${@base_contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi', 'kernel-module-hostap-cs',
'',d)} \
meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb:
${@base_contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi',
'kernel-module-orinoco-cs', '',d)} \
meta/recipes-core/packagegroups/packagegroup-base.bb:
${@base_contains('DISTRO_FEATURES', 'wifi',
'kernel-module-spectrum-cs', '',d)}"
$

  as you can see, the only tests for 'wifi' involve either
DISTRO_FEATURES or COMBINED_FEATURES, *not* MACHINE_FEATURES
individually. under the circumstances, then, can 'wifi' be considered
a legitimate MACHINE feature if it's never being tested in that
context? (the same can be said for 'bluetooth', by the way.)

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================