Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] PROPERTIES=set for meta-packages that should behave like package sets

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:53:12 -0700
Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o> wrote:
> >> Does this seem like a good approach? Are there any suggestions for
> >> improvements or alternative approaches?
> >
> > Strikes me as a good way of causing extreme confusion for users...
>
> Perhaps it's not so confusing if the packages continue to behave
> normally in the usual cases, but they are mapped into set space as
> suggested earlier [1].

Then why not just make the things sets? Come up with a standard way of
distributing sets as part of a repository, and let future EAPIs include
deps upon sets.

> > Consider sets in package.use, for example. Any specified flags
> > should apply to the entire set. But what about set-property
> > packages?
>
> In order to fit into the ebuild framework, the specified flags would
> only apply to direct dependency atoms. Atoms pulled in by recursion
> into other set-property packages would have the flags applied from
> those respective set-property packages.

Right, so you'd get the bizarre case that, given:

cat/foo one
cat/bar two
cat/baz three

The one flag applies onto to cat/foo, the three flag applies only to
cat/baz but the two flag applies to cat/monkey and cat/hamster.

Sets need to *look* different...

> > Sets and packages aren't the same thing, and shouldn't be treated
> > as if they are.
>
> Packages and virtuals aren't the same thing either, but glep 37
> virtuals fit quite well into the existing ebuild framework. It seems
> to me that set-property packages will also fit nicely into the
> existing ebuild framework.

GLEP 37 effectively abolishes virtuals. It doesn't try to overload new
behaviour onto packages.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh