To start.. I humbly ask for no response vs starting a flamewar..

Short version:
The proposed change will require changes in two places, but may cause 
other breakage and or simply not settle well with general consensus.

1) Add a symlink in GNU patch ebuild to symlink patch to gpatch

2) Change references to patch in eclass/eutils.eclass to gpatch
---------

Benefit is that on systems != Linux where GNU patch exists in the 
subpath to some crappy legacy thing which probably shouldn't even be 
called patch.. On these systems calling gpatch explicitly means GNU 
patch and avoids the whole PATH and incompatibility issue.

Would this benefit those working on the FBSD?
Anyone interested in OpenSolaris?

I have other changes I'm making to remove GNUisms, but this one I'm not 
seeing much hope for and will pop up on every emerge --sync..

patch -p0 -g0 -E --no-backup-if-mismatch < /opt/foo/bar.patch

Suggestions?

Thanks

./Christopher