Should "west init" run "west clone"?

[mbolivar]

Right now, installing multi-repo Zephyr takes the following steps:

$ pip install west
$ west init <west-workspace>
$ cd <west-workspace>
$ west fetch

This issue tracks whether "west init" should run "west fetch" as well after cloning west and the manifest, to eliminate the last step before a complete installation is cloned.

I am ambivalent about this idea (generally speaking I don't like to add features to the bootstrapper) but thought it was worth recording the question (and its resolution along with rationale).

Reasons for:

• one less step during installation

Reasons against:

• adds a feature to the bootstrapper which is not necessary
• users might want to fetch with different options than can be passed to init, e.g. to fetch a subset of available projects
• fetch might require different credentials than init, which might not be available at init time

[mbolivar]

@carlescufi @nashif @ulfalizer @tejlmand any thoughts on the above?

[tejlmand]

I don't think so.

Let's keep them separate, as one might do a west init, but want certain arguments to the fetch command.
As example, manifest to use or revision of manifest.

[myrdyr]

I'm not sure if I should raise this as a separate issue or not, but it sort of touches this issue: If you have auxiliary repositories in the manifest, they might be located somewhere that needs authentication. When fetching locally on a development machine, this is usually not an issue as you can store, cache or enter credentials for the various remotes. But for CI, this quickly becomes a problem.

The CI nodes might not be trusted with all the credentials in the world, but could ask the central server for credentials on the fly, using the git tools that are built for the CI system. Normal calls to git fetch will thus wait for credentials and hang/fail in a CI context, and I would like to skip automatic fetching for this reason.

In addition, I'd be really happy if the west list-projects could print out the remotes too. This way, we could run west init, followed by west list-projects, do some cut magic on the list, then have have the CI client handle checkouts with its built-in credential mechanisms. Maybe even have an optional argument in the manifest to signal that this repository requires a manual fetch.

[carlescufi]

@myrdyr
#37

[mbolivar]

@tejlmand @myrdyr thanks for the feedback! I've summarized your comments in the issue description.

I think at this point it's clear that it's not worth adding, so I'm going to close this with the answer "no". We can reopen if we have a compelling reason.

[mbolivar]

Reopening with the new mental model. Should west init run west clone? (We moved away from west fetch because it created detached HEADS, which are gross).

[tejlmand]

I think we should keep west init and west update seperate.

Reason:
It allows users to do west init and then actually adjust west.yml to their needs if they wish so, before running west update

If users wants a one step approach, they can do:
west init; west update
or
west init && west update
depending on their platform.

[mbolivar]

Alright, I'm going to close this again since we all seem to agree, or at least nobody disagrees out loud :)