[gentoo-dev] RFC: PROPERTIES=funky-slots

[Ciaran McCreesh]

There's been a move towards using slots for "clever" things that don't
fit the traditional way of how slots worked. Examples include the new
gtk2 / gtk3 handling and Ruby gems virtuals.

Aside from being abusive, this screws things up for Paludis users.
Paludis tends to bring in newer versions when possible (so that users
aren't stuck with an old GCC forever), and allows the user to select
when new slots are brought in. When suddenly a few packages are using
slots and versions to "mean" something other than what they used to,
this makes the feature unusable.

Thus, as a quick workaround, I'd like to suggest adding a PROPERTIES
value called "funky-slots", which should be set on every version of any
package that uses slots in an unconventional manner. This probably
doesn't need EAPI control, since package manglers are free to ignore
PROPERTIES tokens. It won't solve the abuse, but it will allow the
impact upon users to be lessened.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh