[gentoo-dev] Don't require assignment of empty variables in ebuilds?

[Ulrich Mueller]

Our current policy [1] requires that ebuilds must assign the seven
variables DESCRIPTION, HOMEPAGE, SRC_URI, LICENSE, SLOT, KEYWORDS, and
IUSE, even if their value is empty.

Could we drop this requirement? Repoman already enforces that
DESCRIPTION, HOMEPAGE, LICENSE, SLOT, and KEYWORDS are non-empty
(with some exceptions for virtuals). I don't see why we need to
distinguish the "empty value" and "not assigned" cases.

For example, many live ebuilds already don't define SRC_URI. I'm not
aware of any problems caused by this.

Ulrich

[1] <http://devmanual.gentoo.org/ebuild-writing/variables/#required-variables>