Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:59:47 -0500
> Richard Freeman <rich@...> wrote:
>> Am I missing something?
> 
> Yes. You're missing all the explanations that have already been given
> about why it's impossible to parse ebuilds using anything other than
> bash.
> 

If the EAPI can be parsed from a filename without using bash, why
couldn't it be parsed from a line in the ebuild contents without using
bash?

An inelegant solution (but possibly more elegant than using filenames)
might be to put the EAPI on the first line of the ebuild, with nothing
else on that line.  Then a simple head -n 1 <file> retrieves the EAPI.
Certainly not pretty - but perhaps nicer than putting the EAPI in the
filename itself.  And I don't see how it is any less flexible than
putting it in the filename - if nothing else it would allow you a larger
character set without making command-line work painful.

However, I still don't see how a regexp wouldn't work - if you made the
policy that all ebuilds must have a line that says:
EAPI="<something>" - exactly.  No spaces, quotes mandatory, etc.  That
can't be any less painful on devs than putting the EAPI in the filename,
and it could be checked for by repoman/etc.  Or, if package managers are
willing to do a little more work we could allow a little whitespace and
make things easier on devs.

Issues with not using bash to parse the EAPI value would come into play
mainly in situations where putting the EAPI in the filename wouldn't
work either.