Re: [gentoo-pms] kdebuild-1 conditionales

[Brian Harring]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 06:27:39PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:14:39 +0100
> The impact is that those of us using PMS for developing a package
> manager have to go back and change it.

Not really.

Paludis is, and was, the only one that supported kdebuild.  Meaning 
any user of kdebuild is *already* bound to paludis- again, bluntly, 
this is a paludis specific mess.  If I ever write anything kdebuild 
specific, it would be a converter- this is something the paludis folk 
should be doing if they're really concerned about users still running 
kdebuild (since you'd just have to focus on *rm phases, it's pretty 
straightforward).

Bluntly, you would be pissed if you got stuck having long term support 
for an experimental eapi I split w/out consult- why do you think that 
the reverse wouldn't hold?  My point here is that pkgcore won't be 
implementing kdebuild anytime soon, nor would I expect portage ever to 
do so.  At best, a converter might be written, but that's it- I'm not 
going to put time into a dead format for a mess that isn't mine, 
essentially.

Regardless, if you didn't plan for phasing out an experimental eapi, 
it's not the mainstream eapi's problem- it's your mess to clean up.  
If the user goes and installs something experimental/unsupported, 
that's their issue- the folks they can yell at are their upstream 
(the manager in this case, and gentoo kde).

If we did as you asked, we would have to document every pre eapi 
portage has had (at least 8 off the top of my head), the previous 
iterations of prefix, and realistically, the exherbo format should 
some user manage to install an exheres-0 build into a gentoo box.  
This *is* the case- it's applying the same logic you're using for 
trying to keep kdebuild-1 in.

What I find pointless about this discussion is this notion that 
because you jammed kdebuild into the official eapi doc, the pms team 
in it's current incarnation is responsible for keeping kdebuild 
around and cleaning up that mess.


The proper cleanup if you really wanted this done is the following:
1) add warnings into paludis if kdebuild is detected installed, 
telling them to upgrade/remove whatever, and/or-
2) write a converter.  As said, since it's only *rm phases you really 
have to care about for allowing it to be removed by other managers, 
this isn't incredibly hard- further, full metadata rewrite is probably 
possible w/ eapi2 bits.
3) send out notifications via paludis lists, channels, whatever- 
basically since this is paludis specific, use those mediums to contact 
people and let them know the experiment is dead (they should be 
listening on those mediums anyways).

That solves it technically, rather then just ignoring it and 
pretending we won't have this exact discussion a year later w/ the 
same claims as to why it can't be removed.

Additional thing- note the compromise I mentioned, adding into PMS 
urls directing users where to go for experimental format information, 
or to get at old/dead official eapis.  If they can't catch a 
paragraph upfront telling them where to look, it's their problem.

Meanwhile, you can maintain the ifdef'd bits in your own branch- hell, 
just a copy of the existing pms pdf would suffice since kdebuild is a 
locked/dead format anyways.

Finally, and I admit this is a bit barbed- any user who install this 
eapi should've known it was experimental and that they could get 
support for it for paludis only.  If the user thought it was someday 
going to become an official eapi, that's the user/managers problem, 
not ours.

Our problem, and our sole area of responsibility , is the latex 
obfuscation mess- via git, shifting of maintenance of the kdebuild 
spec to paludis is easy.

More importantly, pms's responsibility/purpose for gentoo is 
presenting users with documentation on the *official* eapis- forcing 
kdebuild bits into that doc misleads users into thinking kdebuild is 
official, thus supported.  User confusion there is, and has been, 
rather annoying.

~harring