Hi folks,

I've been told that my use of eblits in dev-lang/php is something I
should get rid of as soon as possible. Suggested alternative by ferring:
use elibs.

So here goes: I want to see GLEP33[1] implemented in portage, so I can
shift the eblits core and currently global functions into elibs and
probably push the eblits I use for php into the same structure.

Basic question: what needs to be done to get this GLEP accepted and
implemented (it's current status is moribound)?

I extracted a list of things we (or rather the portage and all other PM
teams) need to do:

(1) create elibs() function to enable importing elibs
(2) extend repoman to handle new style elibs and eclass signing/checking
(3) profit ;)

Also, there're some question I have:
(1) The GLEP (under "The reduced role of Eclasses,[...]") speaks of
"Cases where the constant [metadata] requirement is violated are known"
- who exactly are the current offenders?

(2) What's the dev community feeling on "The end of backwards
compatibility..." section in the GLEP? Personal opinion: when the
council reached consensus that old eclasses can be removed with due
last-rites, this section became obsolete. Just putting new-style
eclasses in their own dirs in eclass/ might again be an option. Please
discuss.

(3) Continuing with (2) do you feel we still need to provide a eclass
compat build (tarball) to users *still* not using a sane portage
version? If no, section "The start of a different phase of backwards
compatibility" can probably be stripped from the GLEP.

I silently assumed that our infra servers are running >=portage-2.1.4.4
here.

Instead of all the backwards-compatibility issues the GLEP deals with,
we could just sneak the implementation into EAPI4 and be done with it.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0033.html