On Friday 21 December 2007 05:25:00 Zhang Le wrote:
> The question is really simple.
> Whether we should have two different place to define EAPI?

We need two places because it wasn't implemented properly in the first place 
and we want to retain backwards compatibility for people who use old versions 
of portage. The whole point is to keep a sane upgrade path available 
indefinitely for people with old versions of portage.

> Proponents are trying to prove that we should at least need it be in file
> name.

We need the file name to change because otherwise old versions of portage will 
try to source the ebuild when the EAPI is unknown. This either blocks new 
useful features that will make old versions of portage fail to source them or 
results in more bug reports with zillions of dupes (like the bugs in [1]) 
because people with ancient versions of portage feel the need to report bug 
reports when portage fails after a sync.

At the very least it means waiting for a year between a release with a version 
of portage that supports this and an EAPI that takes advantage of it. So now 
that leaves the question whether we want to change the file name once and 
hope that we won't need to do it again or whether we want to use the 
technically more flexible way where the file name changes whenever a new EAPI 
gets agreed upon.

Or alternatively whether we want to limit ourselves by using an inferior 
solution that limits or delays progress considerably and results in more bug 
reports with zillions of dupes...

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/doc/common-problems.xml

-- 
Bo Andresen