[yocto] admittedly simple questions about DISTRO_PN_ALIAS

[Robert P. J. Day]

  (i'm in a proofreading mood today ...)

reading dev manual here:

http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/1.7/dev-manual/dev-manual.html#usingpoky-configuring-DISTRO_PN_ALIAS

and first silly question -- what is the *purpose* of that variable? as
in, what effect will it have on the eventual image? what difference
will it make that, say, in fedora, a recipe would produce a package
with a slightly different name? that section doesn't really explain
that, as far as i can tell.

  next, i can see the collection of those settings in the file
meta-yocto/conf/distro/include/distro_alias.inc, which has some odd
lines. for example:

DISTRO_PN_ALIAS_pn-blktool = "Debian=blktool Mandriva=blktool"

what's the value of defining an alleged alias that simply has the same
name? what is happening here?

  oh, and there's this amusing example:

DISTRO_PN_ALIAS_pn-bjam = "OpenSuSE=boost-jam Debina=bjam"
                                              ^^^^^^

but since the recipe name is the *same*, i'm guessing that doesn't
cause a problem.

  finally, the dev manual doesn't explain the meaning of lines like:

DISTRO_PN_ALIAS_pn-adt-installer = "Intel"
DISTRO_PN_ALIAS_pn-alsa-state = "OE-Core"
DISTRO_PN_ALIAS_pn-bdwgc = "OSPDT"

  in short, i can appreciate the *concept* of what might be happening
in that short section, while still having no idea what value it has or
how a developer might use it.

rday

-- 

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

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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