Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: l10n.eclass

[Ciaran McCreesh]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:29:24 -0400
Mike Gilbert <floppym@g.o> wrote:
> > If you dep upon foo[linguas_en(+)] and linguas_en isn't in IUSE,
> > what happens?
> >
>
> Firstly, if there are no linugas_ flags in IUSE, I can't see any point
> in such a dependency.

If linguas_ is in IUSE for some versions and not others. You know, as
(+) dependencies always expect.

> > It's not a normal environment variable, and it never has been.
>
> It was a normal variable before someone added it to USE_EXPAND. From
> cvs, it looks like that happened in 2005 or so.

...which is plenty long enough to have dealt with the consequences.

> >> For most gettext packages, there is absolutely no reason that the
> >> ebuild maintainer should have to keep track of every translation
> >> available in a given package across version bumps. If you change
> >> this behavior in a future EAPI, you will break this.
> >
> > Don't use a USE_EXPAND variable if you don't want USE_EXPAND
> > behaviour.
>
> I beleive LINGUAS originates from the autoconf macros (po.m4) provided
> by the gettext package. I believe we added it to USE_EXPAND some time
> after it was implemented in gettext. This "just works" given the
> current portage behavior.

The problem with "just works" is that it "just works unless you look
closely or unless you try to do something slightly non-trivial". We're
not dealing with a small system here, so we need to move beyond "just
works (sort of)" to "correct". We can't provide people with the
features they're asking for without that.

> Perhaps we need to provide a cleaner way for ebuilds to specify if a
> given variable should be treated as a USE_EXPAND or not.

USE_EXPAND isn't a per ebuild setting.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh