Re: [gentoo-dev] Summary of suggested new features in EAPI="4"

[Fabian Groffen]

On 18-12-2010 02:45:06 +0100, Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis wrote:
>
> Problem #1: USE flags cannot contain "." characters.
>
> The following solutions have been suggested:
> - Add support for "." characters in USE flags in EAPI="4".

Like Donnie said, this feels like a purely cosmetic change.  I think
that alone is not a good reason to do this.

> Problem #3: repoman doesn't allow stable packages to have optional dependencies on unstable
> packages (usually until these packages are stabilized).
>
> Example of the problem:
> If "python_abis_2.7", "python_abis_3.1" and "python_abis_3.2" USE flags are masked using
> use.mask on given architectures until Python 2.7, 3.1 and 3.2 are stabilized on these
> architectures, then majority of reverse dependencies of Python won't be tested with new
> versions of Python.

I don't see the problem here actually.  As soon as you're going to allow
stable and unstable to be mixed, the concept of stable isn't worth much
any more, IMO.  If you want to have some experimental feature in some
package, it can never be stable, unless it is e.g. USE-masked, and
unmasking of the right package(s) is left as an excercise for the
user.

Your Python example only indicates to me how much of a mess it has
actually become.  For most other packages, it is quite normal that a new
version is "untested" until it is stabilised, which means unstable users
are the ones to find the problems, if any.  The maintainer (and to an
extent the arch teams) of course has a leading role in this.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo on a different level