On Friday 18 September 2009 16:08:29 Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:01:20 +0200
> 
> Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> wrote:
> > For a long time (about a year, as far as I can tell) PMS has failed
> > to document the bash version needed properly. Relying on PMS will not
> > yield a working package manager in this case as in-tree ebuilds and
> > eclasses have moved on for quite some time. This simple one-character
> > fix should make PMS respect reality for that part again:
[ fix PMS to demand bash 3.2 instead of 3.0 ]

> Sorry, we can't change this for three reasons.
We have to change it for one reason: Specs need to match reality
 
> First, it's a retroactive change to an older EAPI. We don't have the
> authority to do that.
Who does?
 
> Second, the bash version decision was made by the Council, not us.
The dev community decided to improve upon that decision. Council has not tried 
to stop it. After about a year and moderate use (I count over 150 uses in 
eclasses alone) there's no way to migrate back. So the "correct" thing to do 
is for council to vote on it at the next meeting I guess ...

> Third, changing it breaks sourcing done by older, Council-approved EAPI
> compliant package managers. We can't do this, and we can't even do it
> on an EAPI bump.
Wargharbl.
Not changing it breaks sourcing on council-approved trees. We can do it, and 
we have to do it if PMS is supposed to have any relevance at all.


> The solution here's to fix the tree.
That might have been a possible solution a year ago. Too late now.  
(Also, if you want to play semantic games ...
"The interpreter is assumed to be GNU bash, version 3.0 or later."
One could interpret it that any version [and any feature provided by later 
versions] is acceptable, which would allow bash4 features in ebuilds now as 
bash4 is stable. That would definitely not be what you'd expect.)

wkr,

Patrick