David Leverton posted on Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:04:33 +0000 as excerpted:

> On Tuesday 03 November 2009 15:48:03 Patrick Lauer wrote:
>> To quote:
>> "FEATURES is a portage specific package manager configuration variable
>> not specified in PMS and cannot reliably be used in ebuilds or
>> eclasses."
> 
> This has been the Portage team's position for years, since long before
> there were PMS and other package managers.  See
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82513#c16 for example.

Indeed, that comment is from 2005, but I've been around since 2004 and 
remember no other position on FEATURES, ever.  There are others who 
predate me.  Idle question, when was FEATURES introduced as a portage 
variable?

Of course, one way to end the debate would be for portage to unset the 
variable before calling ebuild.sh, on environment pollution grounds...  
Given the history of (ab)use, there'd be solid reason to do that.  Maybe 
I should file a bug...

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman