Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> 
> Had we gone with any of the other proposals a year ago, we'd be waiting
> a year every time a new change came along.

Only if that change prevented obtaining EAPI from wherever it was 
placed.  If you want to make the rule "EAPI=foo appears at the start of 
a new line at the top of the ebuild - EAPI is obtained from the first 
such line" then that would handle any situation except where the ebuild 
format can't have EAPI=foo at the start of a line.  Even XML could 
handle that (just put it in tags flanking it on different lines - since 
XML ignores newlines).  Even a binary file format could handle that if 
you just put <newline>EAPI=<eapi><newline> in the header.  The only 
thing it wouldn't handle is dynamically setting the EAPI, but I'm not 
aware of any proposals that do (except for splitting the EAPI into two 
parts - one part defines how to obtain the EAPI the other part does it - 
but that also works with EAPI=foo in the ebuild).

> 
> If the Council were not a fan of GLEP 55, they would have voted against
> it.
> 

Why?  If there is no reason to move forward with haste why not just 
leave it out there and see if somebody comes up with a better idea or 
see if circumstances change?  If the perception was that there were a 
pressing need for forward movement on this chances are that somebody 
would have proposed an alternative GLEP and the council would have just 
approved that instead.