Fabian Groffen writes:

> Hi Sebastian,
> 
> Have you considered a 100% automatic ebuild generator?  Based on
> heuristics you can come quite far in generating a first shot.  Think of
> tools like autoscan, and what brew create[1] for instance do.
>
Well it would be quite hard to make it 100% automatic as there are so many
ways you can unpack->prepare->compile->install.
Perhaps it would work for simple makefile projects but then you have scons,
cmake, python and java projects.

I have no idea how I would automaticly figure out the useflags, deps and
the build process without user input!

> What are the questions you envisage to present the user here?
>
It won't really be questions prompted to the user but inputfields where
you'll write how you would build it normally.
For example in the "How would you build/install" field you would for a
simple makefile project type:
make && make install
And the program should convert that to the corresponding commands in
src_compile() and src_install()

> In general, trying to come up with a use-case (or two) helps to get
> yourself a focus on what you would like to do, and what not.  A clearly
> defined project has multiple advantages for everyone involved.
>
I thought that this would be to help with generation of small to medium
sized projects. But if I have time I will try to make it able to generate
a working firefox/blender ebuild ;)

I have some small projects that it will try to get it to build first 
ofcourse. That way I can set milestones hopefully.

> How about interaction with an editor, such as Vim?  Would a command-line
> based core be acceptable for you?  It would help you to get it accepted
> in a broader audience.
>
Why indeed! I use most of my stuff from commandline, including vim.

> What language(s) would you like to use to work this thing out?
> Perhaps try to fit approaches like Perl's GPAN into your proposal.
> Likewise, Python's pypi packages may inspire you how to fully
> automatically create an ebuild from just an url.
>
I've only had courses in python and lisp (scheme/racket) so far.
I'm planning to write this in python.