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Am Sonntag, 7. April 2013, 14:24:32 schrieb Rich Freeman: |
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> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 8:08 AM, Andreas K. Huettel <dilfridge@g.o> |
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wrote: |
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> |
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> Personally I'd rather see the toolchain be EAPI0 than maintainer-needed. |
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Oh I certainly agree with you there. |
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> |
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> Is the toolchain being EAPI0 actually hurting anything? If it is, |
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> then that should be motivation for those being hurt to step up and |
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> help fix the parts that are hurting them. |
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There are a few points (but they have all already been presented to death |
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here). Most important are in my personal opinion the longer-term implications. |
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1) The bitrot corner. |
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We're already discouraging the use of old EAPIs for new ebuilds. This |
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requirement will likely become more stringent at some point. Totally |
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independent of that, however, because of nice new features, the number of |
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newer EAPI ebuilds is growing a lot. At some point, EAPI=0 will become the |
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least-tested codepath in the package managers. |
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2) Recruitment. |
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"Here, sonny, let me show you our list of EAPI versions. Make sure you |
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memorize these by heart and dont confuse them. We try to improve them every |
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now and then, but since people insist on using the old ones anyway, well, we |
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have to keep them around. Have fun." |
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That problem, of course, could also be solved (and will eventually be solved |
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that way if needed) by telling new recruits "Unless you want to contribute to |
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obscure stuff like toolchain, you don't have to care about the deprecated |
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EAPIs. 4 and up is fine." Bus factor anyone? |
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Finally, let me remark that the new EAPIs did not drop from a tree during a |
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thunderstorm. Ideas were introduced for a reason, they were discussed here, |
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the features were selected, and eventually the whole package was decided by |
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the council. |
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A large-scale project like Gentoo lives from the cooperation of everyone |
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involved. This is why I tend to react harsh to declarations by fiat like |
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"Toolchain packages are EAPI 0 and we aren't changing.". Especially if they |
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involve a team at the core of the whole distribution. |
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-- |
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|
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Andreas K. Huettel |
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Gentoo Linux developer |
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dilfridge@g.o |
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http://www.akhuettel.de/ |
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