Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposed future EAPI feature: FILES whitelist

[Zac Medico]

On 09/16/2016 08:20 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 17 Sep 2016, Kent Fredric wrote:
>> 4. Due to referential integrity, it should be trivial to identify which
>> files are needed by a given ebuild, and which files are now redundant,
>> assisting with keeping the tree pruned.
>
> How does a file in FILESDIR get stale? The typical scenario is that a
> patch will no longer be needed after a version bump and pruning of old
> ebuild versions. I fear that with FILES the problem would simply be
> shifted: instead of forgetting to delete the stale file, people would
> forget removing the patch from the FILES list.

If FILES supports USE conditionals, then it's possible to use inotify to
implement a QA check that detects unused files in FILES.
-- 
Thanks,
Zac