Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: new global USE flag "srcdist"

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 01/02/2014 07:54 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, 01 Jan 2014, Michael Orlitzky wrote:
>
>> As I said in another reply, more license metadata is good and we
>> should make it available. But a USE flag that changes the meaning of
>> an important global variable is a little hacky, especially if it
>> doesn't solve a real problem within Gentoo/Portage.
>
> A srcdist flag wouldn't be that much different from the bindist flag
> that we already have, and which is also of a non-technical nature.

Two wrongs don't make a right =)

I don't have a problem with bindist, but I don't buy its existence as an
argument for USE=srcdist.


>> If the problems are theoretical (or aren't Gentoo package management
>> problems), maybe it's better to wait and do it right in an EAPI.
>
> As I said, this would leave us with a long transition period. And what
> syntax would you propose? Additional license variables? Or Exherbo
> style depend syntax? TBH, I don't want to open this can of worms. ;-)

An additional variable, similar to RDEPEND/DEPEND. We'd have one for
"I'm using this" LICENSE and one for "I want to redistribute the source
tarball" LICENSE.

If you think the transition period for that is long, how long do you
think it will take for people to become aware of the magic USE flag and
begin populating the other-LICENSE-contained-within-LICENSE variable?
How long until it has 100% coverage?

If maintainers don't use it, the feature is useless, because you can't
rely on it and have to audit everything yourself anyway. For it to
actually serve its purpose (e.g. to be useful for Pentoo), it would need
to be in the PMS and skel.ebuild where people have to pay attention to
it. How well would ACCEPT_LICENSE work if LICENSE was optional and
controlled by a USE flag?

If I intend to automatically redistribute the source tarballs that
portage downloads, I have a few options:

  1. Audit everything myself (impossible)
  2. Ignore the licensing issues (used in practice)
  3. Only ship packages that declare an acceptable source
     distribution license

There's no easy way to do (3) when using conditionals inside of LICENSE.
If there's a new required license variable in EAPI=$next, however, it
becomes tractable.