See Council meeting on 20081211.
---
 ebuild-vars.tex |   14 ++++++++++++++
 tree-layout.tex |    1 +
 2 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/ebuild-vars.tex b/ebuild-vars.tex
index e4fd6d1..6704898 100644
--- a/ebuild-vars.tex
+++ b/ebuild-vars.tex
@@ -209,6 +209,20 @@ of the ebuild's metadata:
 \note Thus, by extension of section~\ref{metadata-invariance}, \t{inherit} may not be used
     conditionally, except upon constant conditions.
 
+The following are special variables defined by the package manager for internal use and may or may
+not be exported to the ebuild environment:
+
+\begin{description}
+\item[DEFINED\_PHASES] A space separated arbitrarily ordered list of phase names (e.g. \t{configure
+setup unpack}) whose phase functions are defined by the ebuild or an eclass inherited by the ebuild.
+If no phase functions are defined, a single hyphen is used instead of an empty string. Package
+managers may not rely upon the metadata cache having this variable defined, and must treat an empty
+string as ``this information is not available``.
+\end{description}
+
+\note Thus, by extension of section~\ref{metadata-invariance}, phase functions must not be defined
+based upon any variant condition.
+
 % vim: set filetype=tex fileencoding=utf8 et tw=100 spell spelllang=en :
 
 %%% Local Variables:
diff --git a/tree-layout.tex b/tree-layout.tex
index 3166a03..5c01443 100644
--- a/tree-layout.tex
+++ b/tree-layout.tex
@@ -263,6 +263,7 @@ order. Other lines may be present following these; their meanings are not define
 \item Old-style virtuals provided by this package (\t{PROVIDE})
 \item The ebuild API version to which this package conforms (\t{EAPI})
 \item Properties (\t{PROPERTIES}). May optionally be blank, regardless of ebuild metadata.
+\item Defined phases (\t{DEFINED\_PHASES}). May optionally be blank, regardless of ebuild metadata.
 \item Blank lines to pad the file to 22 lines long
 \end{compactenum}
 
-- 
1.6.0.4