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Hi,

On behalf of the Lisp project (which includes the Emacs subproject) I'd like to
propose that preservation of mtimes be included as a requirement of EAPI3.

An EAPI bump may not be really necessary for this - after all we're just
specifying previously unspecified behavior - but it will help Paludis.

Portage already supports this, and according to my information pkgcore too, but
unfortunately not paludis. More details on the bug mentioned below.

Background:
Dynamic languages such as Common Lisp and Elisp, but also python (and ruby?)
compile source files to some form which loads and executes faster; in Lisp-speak
these are called fasl's (for FASt Load), for python these are the pyc files.
Need for recompilation is determined by comparing the mtimes of the original
source and the fasl. Both source and fasl are usually installed. If the mtimes
are modified such that the fasl is not newer than the original source anymore
then implementations will attempt to recompile these sources and will try to
write the output alongside the sources. This will cause a sandbox violation if
it happens in an ebuild or fail due to permissions when done as a user.

See also:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/264130 "PMS should require that file mtimes are
preserved on merge"; Gentoo Hosted Projects, PMS/EAPI; NEW; ulm@g.o:pms-bugs@g.o

Marijn

- --
Gods do not want you to think, lest they lose existence.
Religions do not want you to think, lest they lose power.

Marijn Schouten (hkBst), Gentoo Lisp project, Gentoo ML
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/lisp/>, #gentoo-{lisp,ml} on FreeNode
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