Re: [gentoo-dev] A more natural (human-friendly) syntax for dependencies

[hasufell]

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On 09/22/2012 09:55 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The current dependency syntax:
>
> [VERSION-OP] PACKAGE-NAME ["-" PACKAGE-VERSION]
>
> suffers a few problems:
>
>
> 1. It is not really human-friendly.
>
> People don't say things like:
>
> I need newer than monkey-1.2.
>
> They say instead:
>
> I need monkey, newer than version 1.2.
>
>
> 2. With long package names and versions, it becomes hard-to-read.
>
> Consider the following:
>
>> =dev-foo/bar-very-long-my-name-is-4-beta-17
>
> Where does the version number start? And yes, this is a valid
> package name to our rules.
>
>
> 3. Some potentially colliding package names are disallowed.
>
> A package name can't end up with something looking like version.
> Thus, if upstream names package:
>
> frobnicator-11
>
> We need to rename it in the tree, effectively losing the ability
> to follow upstream naming and introducing a bunch of unnecessary
> MY_P, S variables.
>
>
> 4. Adding, removing and changing versions is not friendly at all.
>
> Consider the following dep:
>
>> =dev-foo/bar-bas-bat-11.2.4_alpha
>
> Now, you want to bump the dep to 11.3. You need to find the
> version number, and modify it. Depending on the configuration, ^w
> is going to eat the whole package name or just a single component.
>
> Then, you want to remove the whole version. You need to first
> remove the version number, making sure it doesn't eat a bit of
> package name as well. Then, you have to go back to the beginning of
> the string, and remove the operator.
>
> Or you want to add a version. That one is simpler -- you just need
> to go to one end of the dep, add the operator, then to the other,
> and add the version.
>
>
> The fore-mentioned problems could be solved through introducing a
> more natural dependency syntax:
>
> PACKAGE-NAME [[*WSP] VERSION-OP [*WSP] PACKAGE-VERSION]]
>
>
> This way:
>
> 1. It follows exactly how people are reading it:
>
> PACKAGE-NAME [is VERSION-OP than PACKAGE-VERSION]
>
> 2. It is always clear what is the version, and what is not.
> Additionally, it allows you to introduce whitespace to increase
> readability even more:
>
> dev-foo/bar-very-long-my-name-is-4-beta >= 17
>
> 3. The optional (version dependency) part is at one side of the
> string, so it is easy to add, change or remove. Two times ^w and
> done!
>
> 4. It follows the syntax used by bash (for conditionals),
> pkg-config -- it is more natural in the environment.
>

KISS is not just about simplicity of a system, but also about
simplicity of changes and how big the gain is when the changes are not
simple.
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