On Monday 23 March 2009, Tiziano Müller wrote:
> Spec needed. DOCS or no DOCS?

DOCS, and non-empty default value, please [1].
Some eclasses already do this (not base, but others), and if that 
default doesn't cover it for you, the function can be overridden.

Concerning the argument of declarative ebuilds vs. bash-oriented ebuilds 
brought up by Donnie: Our ebuilds always had declarative parts with an 
impact on the PM (e.g. RESTRICT), or on eclasses (WANT_AUTOCONF, or 
look at the games eclass).
I think if we stay within sane limits[2], following this paradigm is 
going to help developers because more simple cases will be caught by 
the default implementation without adding the complexities of having to 
know tons of (aka "more than one") variables and how they interact.

Robert

[1] As seen here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33544#c17
[2] That is very fuzzy, but we're talking about introducing one variable
    in one function. Any lower limit would be to disallow.