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

[Mike Frysinger]

On Wednesday 25 July 2012 12:38:05 Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Wed, 25 Jul 2012, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> >> 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.
> >
> > i think we should clarify and say that when an eclass provides
> > these, the ebuild need not. completely missing DESCRIPTION/HOMEPAGE
> > should be a warning (and maybe KEYWORDS), and LICENSE should be an
> > error. there are plenty of examples of SRC_URI not being set and
> > that's fine (live ebuilds, ebuilds that only install out of
> > $FILESDIR, virtuals, etc...).
>
> I think we have to distinguish between PMS and tree policy here.

who said anything about PMS ? ;)  this thread was all about tree policy.

> The package manager should be able to handle any empty or missing
> variables (except for DESCRIPTION and SLOT). Otherwise we'd have to
> complicate the spec with additional case distinctions, e.g. for
> virtuals.

SLOT is about the only variable i could see possibly being required by PMS to 
be set somewhere (whether eclass or ebuild doesn't matter).  all the others we 
could (and should) do away with from PMS requirement list considering our PMs 
handle it fine.
-mike