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On 23:13 Mon 08 Sep , Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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> On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 14:33:50 -0700 |
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> Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@g.o> wrote: |
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> > On 12:46 Sun 07 Sep , Marcus D. Hanwell wrote: |
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> > > I personally agree with several others who have replied to this |
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> > > thread. The reduction in lines of code/characters seems to |
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> > > introduce an uglier syntax which is harder to read with |
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> > > questionable benefits. |
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> > |
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> > One of the great things about ebuilds is that they're very natural to |
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> > write in most cases, if you can manage to build the program by hand. |
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> > Raising this barrier of entry for questionable benefit seems like a |
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> > bad idea. We don't need to make it any harder to begin contributing |
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> > to Gentoo. |
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> |
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> So why are we making people know the exact ins and outs of |
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> reimplementing default functions, complete with knowledge of whether or |
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> not to use die, when all they need in most cases is to set a simple |
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> variable instead? |
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|
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This series of variables and syntaxes within them doesn't seem much |
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simpler than functions. From what I understand, it also conflates |
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multiple concepts into a single variable name (the function name, |
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whether it's USE-dependent, and how the configure flag is passed). |
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|
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> What proportion of people do you think know whether or not you need a |
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> die with econf or emake? How many user-written ebuilds out there |
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> correctly install the right docs and don't try to install docs that |
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> don't exist, deal with install parallelisation correctly and handle |
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> error cases properly? |
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|
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You're right, following all of the policy takes work. What I'm talking |
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about is an entry-level ebuild hack that just gets people in the door |
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and is the reason a lot of people love Gentoo. |
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|
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-- |
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Thanks, |
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Donnie |
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|
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Donnie Berkholz |
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Developer, Gentoo Linux |
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Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com |