[yocto] empty packages

[Nicolas Dechesne]

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Robert Berger
<gmane at reliableembeddedsystems.com> wrote:
> According to [1]:
>
> "By default, BitBake does not produce empty packages."
>
> This does not seem to be the case at least for Jethro.
>
> If I bitbake something like this[2] for qemuarm I see empty packages
> like e.g. the -dev package.
>
> Now it's getting even more interesting.
>
> [3] says:
>
> The list of packages to be created from the recipe. The default value is
> the following:
>
> ${PN}-dbg ${PN}-staticdev ${PN}-dev ${PN}-doc ${PN}-locale
> ${PACKAGE_BEFORE_PN} ${PN}
>
> ... but ...
>
> a non empty -dbg package is being built
> an empty -dev package is being built
> no -locale package is being built
>
> Is this expected behavior? If yes please explain.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert
>
>
> [1]
> http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/mega-manual/mega-manual.html#var-ALLOW_EMPTY
> [2]
> http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/documentation/ref-manual/examples/hello-single/hello.bb
> [3]
> http://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/latest/mega-manual/mega-manual.html#var-PACKAGES..."The
> three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and
> Hubris." - Larry Wall

as you have seed in your [1] link, ALLOW_EMPTY can be set for a
specific package to force a package to be created even empty.

ALLOW_EMPTY is set to 1 by default for -dev and -dbg (check
bitbake.conf), but it is not set for -locale.  that should explain the
behavior you are seeing.