bitbake: bitbake-user-manual-metadata: add a section about 'addfragments`

(Bitbake rev: 47e4645da582daa8f3e818ba98e9652c2dcf202f)

Signed-off-by: Alexander Kanavin <alex@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>

bitbake/doc/bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-metadata.rst

@@ -754,7 +754,9 @@ share the task.
 This section presents the mechanisms BitBake provides to allow you to
 share functionality between recipes. Specifically, the mechanisms
 include ``include``, ``inherit``, :term:`INHERIT`, and ``require``
-directives.
+directives. There is also a higher-level abstraction called
+``configuration fragments`` that is enabled with ``addfragments``
+directive.
 
 Locating Include and Class Files
 --------------------------------
@@ -962,6 +964,50 @@ the ``autotools`` and ``pkgconfig`` classes::
 
    INHERIT += "autotools pkgconfig"
 
+``addfragments`` Directive
+--------------------------
+
+This directive allows fine-tuning local configurations with configuration
+snippets contained in layers in a structured, controlled way. Typically it would
+go into ``bitbake.conf``, for example::
+
+   addfragments conf/fragments OE_FRAGMENTS OE_FRAGMENTS_METADATA_VARS
+
+``addfragments`` takes three parameters:
+
+-  path prefix for fragment files inside the layer file tree that bitbake
+uses to construct full paths to the fragment files
+
+-  name of variable that holds the list of enabled fragments in an
+active build
+
+-  name of variable that contains a list of variable names containing
+fragment-specific metadata (such as descriptions)
+
+This allows listing enabled configuration fragments in ``OE_FRAGMENTS``
+variable like this::
+
+   OE_FRAGMENTS = "core/domain/somefragment core/someotherfragment anotherlayer/anotherdomain/anotherfragment"
+
+Fragment names listed in this variable must be prefixed by the layer name
+where a fragment file is located, defined by :term:`BBFILE_COLLECTIONS` in ``layer.conf``.
+
+The implementation then expands this list into
+:ref:`require <bitbake-user-manual/bitbake-user-manual-metadata:\`\`require\`\` directive>`
+directives with full paths to respective layers::
+
+   require /path/to/core-layer/conf/fragments/domain/somefragment.conf
+   require /path/to/core-layer/conf/fragments/someotherfragment.conf
+   require /path/to/another-layer/conf/fragments/anotherdomain/anotherfragment.conf
+
+The variable containing a list of fragment metadata variables could look like this::
+
+   OE_FRAGMENTS_METADATA_VARS = "BB_CONF_FRAGMENT_SUMMARY BB_CONF_FRAGMENT_DESCRIPTION"
+
+The implementation will add a flag containing the fragment name to each of those variables
+when parsing fragments, so that the variables are namespaced by fragment name, and do not override
+each other when several fragments are enabled.
+
 Functions
 =========