On 23:35 Sun 08 Mar     , Tiziano Müller wrote:
> Well, the point I'm trying to make here is a different one: The syntax 
> you proposed is more to write but still equivalent to the one using 
> vars. And looking at the ebuilds - taking G2CONF as an example - it 
> seems that people don't have a problem with putting their config 
> options into vars. And furthermore with your syntax you still have to 
> write out "econf $(use_with ...)" explicitly while adding it the 
> conf-vars to a var (as proposed) makes the complete src_configure 
> function obsolete, allows the usage of the default 
> src_configure/src_compile/src_install (see 
> http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_17e6ae8082aeb762fd01ba7307457789.xml 
> for example) and is therefore even shorter to write.

I think the idea of ebuilds as scripts showing directly how to build 
software is a core part of the Gentoo build-system philosophy. This 
proposal pushes ebuilds toward a formatted file that is not a script. 
Instead, it is more like an Ant XML file that more abstractly describes 
a build. I think this is the wrong direction for ebuilds because they 
should directly resemble how software is built by hand.

One of the key reasons people use Gentoo is that ebuilds are so easy to 
"get" for anyone who has ever built software by hand. I will continue to 
vehemently defend anything that I think retains this key advantage of 
Gentoo over other distributions.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com