Re: [gentoo-alt] [PREFIX] the future of Prefix

[Fabian Groffen]

On 08-10-2008 10:33:51 +0200, Michael Haubenwallner wrote:
> > Yes.  But the Portage guys don't like to push in our work before it's
> > accepted by the community (e.g. proper consensus discussion on -dev).
>
> Ah - so we need to get acceptance on something like this one on -dev?
> <>
> We want to have Prefix support in portage:
> Normal usage in main Gentoo Linux will continue to work.
> It is a different question if Prefix-bits (profiles, keywords,
> ebuild-/eclass-changes, ...) go into the main tree, although this is our
> vision. This vision also includes "You won't need to support/fix Prefix
> bits, just accept and keep them over revbumps like you do for different
> archs."
> We won't support flame wars.
> </>

Well, I personally think we need to put the EAPI problem[1] in there,
the extra variables[2] and functions[3] for Portage.  Later concern are
our keywords[4] and our ground braking core ebuild changes[5].  If the
consensus is to accept our EAPI thing, devs have to keep ebuilds that
are EAPI=?prefix.  That's the deal.  One of the problems is that we need
to touch quite a lot of ebuilds, as well as the issue from[1].

I think we can start with merging trivial non-intrusive patches for
compilation stuff to packages to gentoo-x86 already.  We should probably
at the same time push them upstream and annotate the patches where not
done with that upstream tracker/link.


[1] prefix is orthogonal to all other existing EAPIs, e.g. it can be
overlayed other EAPIs.  Problem here is do we do EAPI="prefix 1" or
EAPI="prefix-1", and what do we do with base-system ebuilds?  We need
them, but they need to remain EAPI=0 (EAPI absent) as well for obvious
reasons.  What's best to do here?

[2] EPREFIX, ED, EROOT, can we agree on their name and definition?

[3] eprefixify, often used in prefix part of EAPI

[4] we extended to full XXX-YYYY for clarity, probably won't get the
-YYYY part if "-linux", but we also added x64- for XXX-, which will
introduce a big war (also sort of whatever, the keyword is the most
important).  Last point, the introduction of all of our keywords and
profiles (quite some) and maybe ekeyword's sorting order.

[5] some base-system ebuilds and eclasses need non-trivial changes for
our arches or Prefix (think of GCC ebuild/eclasses), need agreement here
from their maintainers


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level