Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] glep-0081: prohibit KEYWORDS altering

[Kent Fredric]

On Wed, 7 Aug 2019 11:32:43 -0400
Brian Evans <grknight@g.o> wrote:

> I object to this as I feel they can incorrect such as on prefix.
>
> Also, this goes against the established practice of committing directly
> to stable.  These are exactly the same as virtuals as "they install
> nothing" and "just run a script" (to verify dependencies).

I'll have to disagree: Installing/Upgrading virtuals can have radical
impacts on your system via the dependency graph.

Stabilizing a virtual before all its dependencies get stabilized will
create hell.

Virtuals can also impose USE flags onto other package via the
dependency graph, and all hosts of similar things.

If you wanted an equivalence, you'd need a virtual without
dependencies, which would be a useless virtual.

I think its better to think of the ebuilds in acct/ as more an obtusely
defined text config-file, for which, the interpretation of that text
file is defined by a shared blob of code, the eclass.

The stability of the mechanics of interpreting those text files is what
is in consideration here, not the text files themselves.

And that mechanism is the eclass.

By comparison, you could easily implement an alternative system, where
nodes in acct/ were not .ebuilds, but, just literal text files instead
of bash, with no provisions for keywords at all, and the interpretation
of said files would be up to the package manager.

Not only shouldn't you try to do keywording in such a situation, you
_couldnt_

That said, I do think making this stipulation may be premature, but its
something that I can't imagine we'll know for sure is wise until we've
been employing this strategy for a good time, and we won't know we'll
need the capacity until the first usecase where its needed arises.